The Role of Qualitative Methods in Political Communication Research

International Journal of Communication 9(2015), 1888–1906 1932–8036/20150005

Copyright © 2015 (Dave Karpf, Daniel Kreiss, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, & Matthew Powers). Licensed under

the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.

The Role of Qualitative Methods in Political

Communication Research: Past, Present, and Future

Introduction

DAVID KARPF1

George Washington University, USA

DANIEL KREISS

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

RASMUS KLEIS NIELSEN

University of Oxford, UK

MATTHEW POWERS

University of Washington, Seattle, USA

This article makes the case for a new era of qualitative research to contribute to the

study of political communication at a time of rapid media change. We detail the history

of a tradition of mixed-methods research in the United States from the 1920s to the

1960s, and chart the rise of the currently dominant quantitative methodological

consensus from the 1970s onward. We examine key works within this older tradition of

mixed-methods research for examples of how scholars used field research and other

qualitative methods to build theory and analyze social life. We conclude with a

discussion of the ways qualitative research, including the articles in this special section,

can complement quantitative work and advance the field of political communication.

Keywords: political communication, qualitative research methods

Dave Karpf: [email protected]

Daniel Kreiss: [email protected]

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen: [email protected]

Matthew Powers: [email protected]

Date submitted: 2015–05–13

1 The authors contributed equally to this article. They would like to thank the participants at the

International Communication Association preconference on Qualitative Political Communication, Seattle,

2014, and Arlene Luck for guiding the special section to publication.