Ways to Build On the Unique Contributions of Qualitative Communication

Inquiry for the Study of Conflict

Two questions guide our concluding section: (1) How might we characterize the state of affairs in conflict communication qualitative inquiry? and (2) How might we build on this review to further develop qualitative con­flict research and findings? To begin, conflict communication scholarship has undergone many changes over the past few decades as qualitative research has taken hold in, and broadened the breadth and depth of, con­flict conceptualizations, research, and man­agement with regard to training, education, and interventions.

In addition, our review shows that new areas have emerged for qualitative conflict research in communication. Although prominent in other fields, it has been only fairly recently that scholarship on conflict in contexts such as communities, international, intercultural and cross-cultural, and global communication as well as peace and intractable conflict has taken hold among qualitative communication researchers. In part, this trend aligns with communication’s emphasis on engaged schol­arship. However, this trend also coincides with greater attention to identity negotiations in contexts such as family and organizational communication (e.g., see Rooney, McKenna, & Barker, 2011) as individuals and collectivi­ties work through the classic conflict issues of misunderstandings and resource distribution.

Furthermore, the move from conduit met­aphors of communication has resulted in increased emphasis on the ways conflict as a communication process is understood, felt emotionally, embodied, constituted, and inte­gral to individuals’ and groups’ or collectivi­ties’ development at present and across the life span. There is also communication research specifically focused on conflict communica­tion on the Internet, on social network sites, and in new interactive media that rely on met­aphors other than conduit for their assump- tional bases (e.g., Aakhus & Rumsey, 2010). As our review indicates, current communica­tion conflict research in the qualitative tradi­tion centers on sensemaking, performance, and talk in interaction and its relationship to and invocation of societal (and global) discourses. Finally, conflict communication has emerged as a site and consequence of indi­viduals’ and collectivities’ struggles to live out their ideological and cultural beliefs within political economies that emphasize hypercom­petitiveness, commodification, privitization, and economic sustainability. In short, quali­tative conflict research utilizes a number of different communicative metatheoretical and theoretical approaches. Consequently, we find an array of qualitative methods being used of which we covered only the most prominent.

Our review would be inadequate if we simply recounted the variety of methods being used in qualitative conflict communication research and different kinds of findings that resulted. Therefore, we also discuss the genera­tive value of such approaches. Certainly one of the primary functions of good quality research is to generate theory. Qualitative research in conflict communication is no exception. But the origins of theory development differ in qualitative inquiry from more traditional social science. Specifically, theory is developed from research participants and texts them­selves and from a problem-oriented, engaged scholarship impetus. Qualitative research pri­marily operates from an inductive model, whereby researchers sort through empirical and textual data in multiple iterations, win­nowing down the variations into findings that are trustworthy and valid because of the care researchers take in data collection and analysis as well as in conceptualizing, imple­menting, and reporting their studies.

Beyond theoretical and analytic frame­works, qualitative conflict research also begins with excitement as well as unease and feelings of vulnerability on the part of qualitative researchers. Quite simply, there are unforeseen twists in participants’ conflict stories, meta­phors, recalled incidents, interviews, observed behaviors, and so on that may not be easily accounted for or imagined based on extant theory, research, and practice. In qualitative conflict research, the conduct and findings of such investigations have changed the ways in which communication researchers access and consider how individuals and collectivities constitute and are involved in conflict. Rather than focusing primarily on conflict reduction, styles, and generalizable intervention strate­gies, qualitative conflict researchers probe into the underlying communicative dynamics throughout conflicts in context. In this sense, the fullness of the communicative constitution of conflict is realized.

For the selected research projects in our review, we note how qualitative research con­tributes insights and conducts research in ways that are different from, but can be complimen­tary to, more traditional quantitative research. The reasons for these contributions have been that qualitative methodology accesses differ­ent aspects of human communication and spans lifetimes of individuals and communi­ties through ability to collect retrospective accounts and consider possibilities for the future. Furthermore, qualitative research data gathering, conduct, and analysis can bridge mind-body divides by enabling researchers to be more attuned to the ways in which emo­tions assist in understanding and, as such, enrich findings. As we have shown, the effort to ground conflict research in communica­tion takes many forms, following interpretive, critical, postmodern, and other paradigmatic approaches, as well as mixed methods with corresponding traditions put into conversa­tions with each other toward understanding and resolving some problem or need.

These research agendas in qualitative con­flict communication might develop more fully the possibilities inherent in underrepresented qualitative methods in our review, namely, life histories, performance ethnographies, and postmodern critiques based on empirical research. Furthermore, case studies and lay­ered or crystallized approaches might prove productive in rendering conflict accounts from intersectionalities and multiple communica­tion paradigms or traditions. These studies might delve into the ways in which race, class, ethnicities, sexual social orientations, culture, nationality, and other differences are built into conflict interactions and structures. These everyday structures that seem so normal reproduce the discontent that erupts into overt conflict and simmers as intractable conflict remains without resolution.

Finally, studies on hidden and taboo con­flicts and struggles can do much to reorient participants and scholars toward research on conflict communication that disenfranchises and privileges some parties. Uncovering and examining such conflicts would require varied qualitative approaches. In closing, the appeal of qualitative conflict communication research today is that it challenges accepted practices and understandings of a process that is essen­tial to human behavior. Our review indicates the importance of qualitative work and of further investigating conflict communication in innovative, even transformative, ways.

Note

1. We used a combination of keywords in “Advanced Search” functions in these data­bases. For example, to locate research articles on conflict that employed “mixed methods,” we would enter the keyword “conflict” in the keyword search box and choose the option for it to appear either in the title of the article or in the article abstract. We would also choose the default Boolean function “AND” and enter the keyword “mixed methods” in the keyword search box right below and pick the option for it to appear in the title of the article, in the article abstract, or in the full text of the article depending on the number of results we got. Since other keywords such as “multimethod” and “multiple methods” are used often interchangeably with “mixed methods,” we would repeat the same process by altering the keyword combinations. After search results were returned, we would read through the article abstracts, and often the methods section of actual articles, before retrieving appropriate articles for our analyses and save them in a folder in our computers labeled “mixed methods.” Where possible, we gave preference to articles and authors published in the communication discipline although we included articles from such jour­nals as Conflict Resolution Quarterly.