My Journalistic phillosophy: Qualitative research meets Audio journalism

Qualitative research sees the social world through the eyes of the research subjects and understands actions and meaning in their social context and thus it says it collects naturally occurring data.  

Field research appeals to people who like to who like to interact with people from different social groups, people who like face to face social interaction with real people in their natural setting. This type of research method is far more exciting than quantitative research methods that use complicated mathematical statistics that do not look beyond the observable variables (Newman, 2001; 379).  Field research allows for studying fascinating unfamiliar social worlds such as sex addicts, gangs, criminals and many other hidden social groups that would make great documentaries and news feature content.

Audio journalists as qualitative researchers

Most field research data are in the form of field notes, researchers often write their observations down into a number of academic pages and sometimes but rarely they also use audio recorders. Audio recorders are often used as supplements in field research to researcher’s written field notes.

Traditional qualitative researchers do not approve of using audio recorders as a sole means of collecting field data, as they feel recorders create “disruption” and an increased awareness of surveillance; of course this is not true for me and later I shall reveal ways that writing on the field can be “disruptive”.

Researchers who use audio recorders also have to deal with associated problems such as checking batteries and memory storage.  Transcribing large hours of audio is time consuming and there is great risk of not accurately interpreting the mumbled words. When listened to at a later stage of audio recordings; they do not often convey subtle contextual meaning (Newman, 2001: 412).

However some researchers are now convinced to use audio recording material as it is becoming increasingly difficult to take good written notes on the field.

When furiously writing notes down researchers cannot see and hear the action happening on the field. The attention given to note writing is taken away from field observation where it should be. Written scholarly work actually has the same interest as those of documentarist’s, preserving local cultures, understanding often different ways of life and giving voice to often ignored societies.

Representational issues

When writing about people and cultures from field observation notes, researchers face difficulties in terms of appropriately representing societies and peoples voices.  These concerns have allowed some researchers to experiment with audio but even then the academic field considers written accounts of field observation (Makagon & Nueman, 2009: 1).

Audio documentaries are considered as one of the best alternatives for presenting ethnographic field work instead of the old and often boring scholarly written work.

Audio documentaries give more broad portrayal of human experiences; they achieve this through letting the subjects that are being studied to speak for themselves. Through the use of ambience sound audio documentaries give the listener a more nuanced feeling and idea of the culture or society being studied (Makagon & Nueman, 2009: xi).  

Through creative management of content from the field, radio documentaries have an opportunity of reaching a larger audience than would have been the case with written material (Makagon & Nueman, 2009: xi).