Normative Media Research

The article enquires about the role of researchers in an era of increasingly competitive innovation in the media industry. I argue that research-driven change in the mass media is possible, and that there should be more of it in the future. More democratic participation in mass media is the issue that most urgently needs to be resolved, and in Part II I will point out a possible strategy of reformation in the field. The article is a form of meta-theory or ‘theory of science’, and it zooms in on the normative attitude of the social researcher towards the larger society. The first part is a history of normativity in modern American and European social science from the 1920s onwards, with a focus on media studies. It sets the background for a framework for instructive media research, that is, research in which a normative goal is pursued with all the tools that social research can legitimately apply. I present three sectors of the media that can be directly and indirectly controlled by the researcher: the media’s technical platforms, their editorial procedures, and citizens’ participation in the media.