Rethinking the Rethinking

During the last few decades, the possibilities and limitations of qualitative media audience research have regularly been discussed in media and communication research. Quantitatively oriented researchers have claimed that qualitatively oriented research is incapable of producing general knowledge. From a ‘radical ethnographic’ point of view it has been stated that such knowledge is more or less useless, while other qualitatively oriented researchers have approached the question of generality in a more balanced way, and argued for the necessity to interpret specific events within a framework of more general theories. But these solutions are not satisfactory. The aim of this article is to suggest an alternative conceptualisation of generality. From the meta-theoretical viewpoint of critical realism, this article states that generalisations have to take into consideration the domain of the deep structures of reality. Qualitative media audience research should aim at producing general knowledge about the constituent properties or transfactual conditions of the process of media consumption.