Types of Methods
Communication scholars have heeded the call to conduct descriptive studies and to examine conflict interactions over time. Specifically, researchers have distributed surveys in the field, produced transcripts of naturalistic interactions, and analyzed data through a wide array of quantitative and qualitative category systems.
Language and discourse analysts have examined word choices, mapped components of narratives, and tracked turn taking and topic shifts. Using ethnographic approaches, researchers have taken field notes, conducted in-depth interviews with participants, and studied relevant documents (Cobb, 1994; Putnam et al., 1991). Hostage negotiation investigators not only observed training simulations but also talked with negotiators about their observed interactions (Rogan, Hammer, & Van Zandt, 1997). Scholars have also used in-depth case studies to analyze empowerment in mediations (Bush & Folger, 1994, 2005; Shailor, 1994) and to track the development of protracted conflicts (Cloud, 2005; Putnam & Peterson, 2003). These approaches illustrate the diversity of research methods that conflict scholars have employed in the past several decades.Role of Communication in Conflict Research
As this review suggests, communication scholars have embraced a type of “unified diversity” in charting the role that social interaction plays in conflict. Communication surfaces as perceived strategies, actual verbal and nonverbal messages, patterned and sequenced messages, expressions of emotions, language and word use, media, symbols, interpretations of actions and reactions, and surface- and deep-level meanings. Hence, it emerges in studies as both a structural and an interaction variable, as a process that defines the essence of the conflict, and as sensemaking or interpretations of the conflict. These relationships cluster into the following categories: communication as a variable, as a process, as an interpretive approach, and as a dialectical relationship.
More on the topic Types of Methods:
- Oetzel John, Ting-Toomey Stella. The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication: Integrating Theory, Research and Practice. SAGE Publications,2013. — 912 p., 2013
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