1. CBQ REVIEW ESSAY: A Review of Recent Sources in Mass Media Interviewing, 1998–2006

Abstract

Interviewing has, of course, become a common place occurrence. Most adults are familiar with the nature of the transaction, but perhaps not with the complexity of what is actually happening. Modern interviewing as we have come to understand it is basically a post-World War II phenomenon. One of the major changes is the development of interviewing ordinary people (as compared with the more typical past practice of interviewing elites or at least only the significant players). In Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies, Weiss observes that interviews permit listeners “to learn about places, environments, organizations, fashions, careers, and cultures with which they would otherwise have no contact or exposure. But perhaps more telling is that interviews also reveal “interior experiences” including perceptions, and how they are interpreted. The human condition covering events, families, work, and all the emotions from joy to grief become open for all to witness” (Weiss, p. 1).

David Silverman refers to the “interview society” (p. 248) in his 1997 Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice (London: Sage), and that was a decade ago. Today we find ourselves being exposed more and more to a panoply of interviewing experiences. This essay review is designed to present the most recent books with both sides of the equation presented. Guidance on how to be a successful interviewer, and also how to be a wise and sensible interviewee can be found in the following pages. The neutrality of the interviewer is assumed, but should not always be taken for granted as various astute observers note.

The subject domain of interviewing in mass media contains a range of topics considered below. The essay begins with general resources. Fielding's edited work, titled Interviewing, is the most unusual, as this four-volume book set contains “classic” journal article reprints. While there are no articles specifically on mass media, the individual contributions all pertain to the general topic and cover issues and findings that are relevant to the conduct of interviewing in mass media.

As one element of the mass media, entries dealing with interviewing in journalism, follow. Of particular note in this category are Brady's The Interviewer's Handbook and the treatment of the online journalism environment as found in Craig's 2005 chapter. As the title suggests, Brady's work presents a “how to” approach. Craig's contribution brings interviewing into the electronic/computer era and addresses the special challenges and benefits associated with it.

The interviewing in mass media section includes a review of Elsberg's Media Interview Owner's Manual, Barber's The Craft of the Media Interview, and Jones' Winning with the News Media. These, and other entries in this section, provide the core of the recent literature by highly experienced interviewers, and would be useful to anyone contemplating an interviewing career or interesting reading for the person attempting to understand the techniques used by the professionals.

In the era of television and the Internet, radio interviewing still has a place, and Beaman's Interviewing for Radio more than adequately addresses the special consideration of the medium. Television interviewing is covered in Merlis' How to Make the Most of Every Media Appearance. The broader category of video interviewing is treated in The Video Performer, a manual written by Dreibelbis. Bull analyzes the highly specialized world of political communication via television appearances in his work titled The Microanalysis of Political Communication.

The special kind of interviewing found in the public relations environment closes this essay. These works are guides or “how-to” presentations. All are useful, but the Palmer volume may prove to be the most valuable in terms of what to avoid and how to use the media for your own purposes.     

Managing Patient-centered Communication across the Type 2 Diabetes Illness Trajectory: A Grounded Practical Theory of Interactional Sensitivity

This article uses the theoretical and methodological framework of Grounded Practical Theory (GPT) to provide a lens for analyzing and interpreting discourse as a situated form of social action in routine Type 2 diabetes visits. Drawing on a total data-set of 400 audio-recorded routine visits, we randomly selected 55 visits for qualitative analysis. In this article, we use Conversation Analysis to document communication techniques, which we in turn use as evidence to ground our claims within the GPT framework. We use two single cases of interaction to analyze communication techniques physicians use when recommending a change from oral medication to insulin. We argue treatment intensification is a key moment in health communication to reflect about patient centeredness because physicians can find themselves in an interactional dilemma: while insulin may effectively help control unstable disease, an insulin recommendation may simultaneously counter patient values and treatment preferences. Our analysis suggests that physicians use what we call interactional sensitivity to balance medical need and patient preferences when making medical decisions by tailoring their communication according to the local situation and the patient's larger illness trajectory. We propose that interactional sensitivity is a type of communication work and a quality of patient-centered communication characterized by the theoretical relationship between tailoring communication to the contingencies of the local interaction and the global illness trajectory. Overall, this article contributes to health communication scholarship by proposing a normative model for reflecting on how physicians negotiate challenging interactions with patients during routine chronic illness visits.     

Understanding Electronic Media Audiences: The Pioneering Research of Alan M. Rubin

One can hardly be considered knowledgeable of uses and gratifications theory without being familiar with the work of Alan M. Rubin. His advancement of our knowledge about the centrality of the individual in the media uses and effects relationship has inspired numerous scholars to add to the body of knowledge guided by uses and gratifications research. The breadth of Rubin's work in this regard is extraordinary, but his devotion to clarifying central concepts of uses and gratifications in his audience-centered research should also be recognized. Rubin's pioneering studies in uses and gratifications remain as benchmarks for scholars seeking to understand electronic media and how engaged audiences relate to media content.     

Informing choice: The organization of institutional interaction in clinical midwifery care

Researchers in LIS have called for the study of the social practices out of which informing is achieved. This article analyzes the informed choice discussion (ICD) between midwives and childbearing women as a form of institutional interaction that accomplishes informing. The ICD institutionally presumes a woman to have information needs that must be met before she can make a decision. Conversation analysis, a method commonly used to study practitioner–client interaction but little used in LIS, is employed to identify the unique “fingerprint” of the ICD. Analysis shows how participants develop a joint sense of the interactional tasks of informing and deciding. As an ideal, informed choice divides the cognitive labor: informing is midwife-led and deciding is client-led. In practice, however, informing and deciding are intertwined to such an extent that their resolution is neither automatic nor straightforward but must be negotiated. To be accepted as adequate, a decision must also be deemed adequately informed. Difficulties in negotiating transitions can result in one speaker treating a decision as resolved while another treats it as still open. Analyzing the fingerprints of institutional informing interactions can provide a starting point for analyzing the interactional accomplishment of informing in other settings.     

Monologisation as a Quoting Practice

This paper explores a particular aspect of journalistic quoting, monologisation. During monologisation, the interactive turn exchange between the journalist and the interviewee is simplified in the resulting article. This simplification process mainly takes the form of obscuring the role of the journalist in the original spoken discourse. As a result, the quotations appear to be unprompted, continuous utterances by the interviewee, and this in turn has seminal consequences for the interpretation of the quotation. This paper will demonstrate that monologisation is an effective means for journalists to steer the reading of the article and to include their own points of view without breaking the professional rule that journalism must separate facts from opinions. The results of this study are based on a comparison between two types of empirical data; recordings of journalistic interviews, on the one hand, and published articles, on the other. This study will focus on one particular type of journalistic interview that has been largely neglected in prior research along with its specific quoting practices, namely the interviews were conducted by the journalists in order to collect raw material for written journalistic items, published either in print or electronic form. This paper will show that interviews of this type involve highly diverse and mutually adaptive interaction, contrary to the clearly structured question–answer interviews that are used as sound bites in television news items and have thus far remained the primary focus of research on both journalistic interviews and quoting processes. The notion of monologisation could be applied in various domains where an interview is converted into a written account, such as research interviewing and police interrogations.     

A Rationale for Scholarly Examination of Institutional Review Boards: A Case Study

In recent years, institutional review boards (IRBs) have become an increasingly significant part of the research process for communication scholars. This essay provides a rationale for scholarly examination of IRBs. Using the review process for this special issue as a case study, it identifies a number of ironies that provide justification for this special issue.     

A Rationale for Scholarly Examination of Institutional Review Boards: A Case Study

In recent years, institutional review boards (IRBs) have become an increasingly significant part of the research process for communication scholars. This essay provides a rationale for scholarly examination of IRBs. Using the review process for this special issue as a case study, it identifies a number of ironies that provide justification for this special issue.     

Expanding your institutional repository: Librarians working with faculty

Since a successful institutional repository will contain a higher percentage of the contributors' materials, we implemented a system to upload faculty publications more effectively to our academic library's institutional repository. This article acts as an explanation of that system, in the hopes that other scholars or libraries can implement similar systems to increase the popularity of their own institutional repositories. Our method enables a maximum level of materials inputted with minimal required effort from faculty or scholars. We utilize student workers and the resources of the institutional repository manager to get materials uploaded. The success of this method is indicated by the increase in articles that have been uploaded to our institutional repository; as a result of the implementation of this program, the number of publications in our university's institutional repository by these authors has increased 174 %.     

Documentary Filmmaking and Ethics: Concepts,Responsibilities, and the Need for Empirical Research

In the discourse on documentary filmmaking and ethics, scholars focus on the filmmaker–filmed relationship and relate many concepts to morality in documentary filmmaking. They additionally mention circumstances that may be relevant and they identify insufficiently meaningful solutions to such moral issues. However, they fail to reflect on ethical theories and how these inform filmmakers’ ideas about the right thing to do. In this article I discuss the discourse and how it can serve to further develop the debate on the ethics of documentary filmmaking. I propose to include empirical data about filmmakers’ experiences and opinions to help us understand what ethics truly inform documentary filmmaking.     

合法性的争夺:为什么图书馆学人热衷于讨论研究对象——兼与刘君先生商榷

图书馆学理论研究一直热衷于讨论图书馆的本质是什么,并将之视为图书馆学的研究对象。一些学者指出这种模式的图书馆学理论研究具有明显的本质主义色彩,应该予以摒弃。这种观点引起了学界其他学者的反驳与批评。图书馆学人热衷于讨论图书馆学的本质,是想凭借本质研究向学术界和社会证明图书馆学的合法性。从目前图书馆学界的各种研究范式来看,实证研究在建构图书馆学合法性上卓有成效。要确定图书馆的学科合法性,根本路径是立足于学科特色,选择社会和学术界普遍关心的问题作为学科研究议题,并通过学术界认可的表达方式向学术界展示图书馆学的研究成果。     

后机构改革时代：档案机构定位的重塑—— 基于山东省省级机构档案工作者的调查

在2018年各省政府陆续开启的新的一轮改革的过程中,档案机构一方面置身于全新的政府发展方向潮流中,另一方面其管理体制也从“局馆合一”转向了“局馆分离”。本文以政府机构改革为出发点,选取山东省省级机构的档案工作者为研究对象,采取半结构化访谈法收集数据,围绕档案机构在后机构改革时代应如何确立自身的定位这一研究问题,从宏观时代背景层面、中观政府改革层面和微观档案机构层面梳理了档案工作者在后机构改革时代的担忧和矛盾,并以这三个层面为导航,为档案机构在后机构改革时代的定位重塑提出建议。     

Is research with qualitative data more prevalent and impactful now? Interviews,case studies,focus groups and ethnographies

With qualitative research apparently threatened by big data, researchers, editors, educators, librarians, and publishers need to understand the mix of research methods used in their field to guide decision making. In response, this study assesses the prevalence and citation impact of academic research between 1996 and 2019 that reports one of four common methods to gather qualitative data: interviews, focus groups, case studies, and ethnography. With minor exceptions, the prevalence of qualitative data has increased, often substantially, since 1996. In addition, all 27 broad fields (as classified by Scopus) now publish some qualitative research, with interviewing being by far the most common approach. The citation impact of interview and focus group research mostly decreased over time, whereas of case study citation impact increased, and ethnography was above average in its two core subject areas. This suggests that methods teachers, researchers, editors, librarians, and publishers should be increasingly open to the value of qualitative data.     

NGOs in India's elite newspapers: a framing analysis

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are deeply embedded within the socio-political landscape of India. NGOs were instituted by the Indian government specifically for the purpose of nation-building at the time of national independence in 1947 (Muttalib, 1987). In recent times however, NGOs have come under much scrutiny because of the expanding neoliberal agenda, and global discourse surrounding NGOs often involves questions of accountability. Communication scholars have studied NGOs in various contexts, but what remains unexplored is the question of how NGOs are portrayed within the media, which in contemporary society constitutes the public sphere or space of public opinion. It is important to look at the media because public legitimacy can have serious consequences for an NGO's ability to garner funds, influence policy, and build trust in beneficiary communities. This study thus asks the research question: How are NGOs framed in the Indian media? A qualitative analysis was employed to identify news frames or ‘interpretive packages’ used to talk about NGOs in two of the most widely-circulated English daily newspapers in India. The analysis identified four frames: the ‘do-good’ frame, protest frame, partner frame, and the public accountability frame. The findings show that, for the most part, NGOs are represented in a positive and even a nationalistic light, in spite of the larger global discourse interrogating NGO practices. The discussion elaborates on institutional, political, and historical reasons why NGOs are portrayed favorably in the newspapers.     

Studies of the Publishing Industry’s Cultural Quality

Publishing belongs to the information content industry in essence, where “the content is the king, the brand brings success”. Whether the content of the publication is appealing, accessible, attractive and influential depends on its cultural content. That is why we pay special attention to the research on cultural quality in relation to online publishing technology and information systems transmission. This article presents an in-depth research on this issue from three aspects: why should the research on cultural quality be emphasized; how to understand culture and cultural quality; what are the principles and conditions to form the cultural quality.     

数字化语境下信息科学多元研究范式探析

研究范式是数字化语境下信息科学基础理论研究的重要内容。信息科学是具有多元研究范式的常规科学,不同研究范式之间彼此关联,有可比性。本文在文献调研的基础上论述信息科学三种典型研究范式的基本观点和最新进展。系统/物理范式与信息论和技术传统关系密切,忽视信息用户和理论基础的适用性问题已成为该范式受到争议之所在。认知范式作为系统/物理范式的替代性范式而兴起,其科学共同体的发展趋于成熟。针对认知范式中社会维度的缺失,整体主义认知观等理论模型的提出使认知范式更加完善。领域分析范式重视认识论方法,强调社会文化情景的重要性,提倡从知识领域和话语社群角度开展研究。指出应从元理论层次比较信息科学各研究范式的基本理论假设与预设立场,构建从不同视角阐述社会信息现象的多元研究范式结构框架。     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom–constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness–closedness and control–restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

The Place of the Practicum in Teaching Reference Interview Techniques

That the reference interview is a communication process has long been recognized in the library profession. Reference librarians must be able to relate effectively to all types of patrons in order to deliver quality service. Communication in the reference interview is both verbal and non-verbal, and these two elements must be in harmony if the interview is to be effective and the library patron to receive the information he/she is seeking. Realizing the importance of good interviewing techniques to success as a reference librarian, library educators are now devoting more time to the interview in reference courses, utilizing approaches which are both theoretical and practical. In this paper, the value of the practicum to the teaching and learning of interviewing techniques is emphasized, and various methodologies for offering such field experience are explored. The instructional programs in several library schools are discussed, with particular emphasis on the author's school, and a possible reference practicum program is outlined.     

Information Needs: Developing Personas of Humanities Scholars

A persona represents a group of target users that share common behavioural characteristics. The personas method, an approach to systems design, has been receiving significant attention from practitioners. However, only anecdotal evidence currently exists for the effectiveness of personas and there have been criticisms about its validity as a scientific approach to research. This paper attempts to demonstrate how incorporating personas may lead to better understand the information needs of humanities scholars. Humanities scholars in an advanced ICT environment in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are sampled as a case. Previous studies show that the humanities scholars have a significant negative relation with ICT use; they are using it less than scientists and social scientists, and they demonstrate a significantly higher use of library facilities than other academics. There is also a lack of up-to-date international research on the humanities scholars' information needs that takes into account recent rapid increases in the availability of ICT infrastructure, especially the Internet. As such, the objective of this study is to understand the information needs of humanities scholars and the effect of the electronic environment on their information seeking behaviour using personas. This study is conducted within a conceptual framework based on an integration of existing models of information-seeking behaviour, along with additional new elements representing the information context environment, such as languages, decision to seek and format of information resources. The four personas that were uncovered in this study may be able to effectively communicate the actual information needs of the humanities scholars through the personal narrative, name, and face, which continuously will remind the academic library of what their users really want and need from their services. This study also lays the foundation for future research by identifying variables of interest, and building construct validity through the themes of information needs that emerged.     

Envisioning the Mature Re-Entry Student: Constructing New Identities in the Traditional University Setting

Summary

As most students attend university following high school graduation, it is not surprising that the institutional ‘traditional student’ discourse is one of fraternity parties and breaking free of parental control. This discourse infuses university life, and excludes mature students from the vision of those who influence students' academic careers. While educational research provides an ‘adult learner’ discourse, many mature students find that they are not appropriately served by their professors or reference librarians. What may help is an environment which does not presume a need and its solution based on these discourses, but one which treats all students as individuals.     

The play's the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare

This study examines how theater professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The research aims to address critique of the information studies/science field's excessive focus on active information seeking and searching by developing an alternative approach, and to understand sense-making as more than the problem-solving behavior of individuals: to see it as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervin's sense-making, Foucault's discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructionism.