How to conduct interviews on media repertoires as routine practices – problems and empirical experiences

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a changing media environment, the practices individuals apply on a daily basis and in different life spheres have altered dramatically. Small investors, for instance, increasingly rely on the internet to follow financial market trends online or to gather information on the background of companies before investing in their stocks. However, it is an open question whether or not the individual is conscious or rather unaware of these changed practices since the use of different media might be inherent to their daily routine. This potential lack of awareness makes it difficult to research the role these Transforming Communications play in the individual’s conduct of life. Therefore, the purpose of this methodical chapter is to identify an interviewing strategy for cross-media studies that meet the requirement of openness so as to ensure the respondents’ freedom to set their own relevance structures, while at the same time maintaining the thematic focus on the interviewees’ media repertoire.

Openness is the main principle that distinguishes qualitative social research from the quantitative approach. While in quantitative empirical research the investigator sets the relevance structures with the help of pre-formulated categories, the aim of qualitative empirical research is to avoid imposing a structure, but to reconstruct actors’ subjective relevance through the principle of openness (e.g. Przyborski/Wohlrab-Sahr 2009; 140). In the same vein, we aim to reconstruct the relevance individuals attach to their media repertoires and to media change in their conduct of life with respect to disturbances and coping.