Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research: Does it matter when it comes to Photojournalism?
Whether we like it or not, just about everyone has a smartphone in their pocket these days. And with every smartphone comes a camera and the ability to record just about anything at any time. This means hundreds and hundreds of hours of uploaded videos and images to the internet, all uploading the human experience. It also means that there are about a billion photojournalists roaming each and every day, just like the Sprint commercial says.
Even though the ad is a few years old, it leads to an interesting point about photojournalism and our ethical approach to capturing just about everything around us. Certain things shouldn’t be shared, and I’m sure we’ve all hit send on something we immediately regretted. But when it comes to shocking or graphic images, where does the regular person draw the line? Where does the professional photojournalist draw the line?
A few studies asked just that, and they used completely different methods to get their answers. One used a quantitative approach through a survey with data and percentages. While the other asked deep questions that were rooted in context, taking advantage of a more qualitative approach. Both studies produced interesting results, but their methods couldn’t be more different. So, did it really matter which they used? To be brief, yes, but as usual, if you want a more in-depth explanation of the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, check out this video from Mr. Sinn on YouTube. It does a wonderful job at putting the differences into everyday terms with detailed examples for each method.
Now, let’s dive into each research method by looking at two example studies that use each method for a fairly similar topic:
Quantitative
For this study, the researchers wanted to address the ethical concerns of an uprise of citizen photojournalism in the digital news environment and compare their ethics to professionals.
Think about it, when was the last time you got your news from social media? Not the official CNN account or the Associated Press, but just a regular user on the platform reporting about a current event? I can vividly remember images and videos of the attacks in Gaza and Palestine going viral from regular citizens, as well as seeing what this study would consider “professional photojournalism”. The line can be hard to distinguish, especially thanks to digital news, but what effect does this change have on ethics?
To be brief, the study found that both citizens and professionals perceive themselves to be more ethical than the other, with citizen photojournalists basing their ethics off on what they thought the professionals “should” do. It’s a lot, I know, but what’s interesting about the study is how they came to these results. When studying ethics, most research will skew more towards qualitative data, for instance, in-depth interviews or context-based findings. However, this study was conducted through a survey using a 7-point Likert-type scale (which is just a fancy term for strongly disagree to strongly agree). Thanks to this, they have numbers, percentages, and statistics to represent how ethical photojournalists believe they are, leading to some seriously interesting conclusions when that data is put up against other data like demographics. This approach is rare for studies looking at ethics, but nonetheless, very important. Now, let’s look at another study that took a different approach on a similar topic.
Qualitative
This next study chose to focus on the ethics of photojournalists, not compared to one another, but in their approach to capturing and portraying graphic images to the public. The internet is a wild place. There’s little regulation to what you see and hear, and often times that leads to graphic and shocking images being shared or viewed with little to no warning. I can remember plenty of times stumbling upon images that left me deeply upset, but is it a photojournalist’s duty to publish these issues, whether or not they may upset the audience?
The researchers for this study decided to conduct in-depth interviews to understand the thought process behind capturing and publishing these images with qualified photojournalists, which included some who had reported stories covering violence, extreme poverty, and rare medical conditions. In each and every interview, they uncovered a similar ideology, that concern was always demonstrated for the subject first, not the audience, and that publishing these images was a way to empower their subject and inform the audience of an unjust reality.
This could’ve never been uncovered or realized without an in-depth conversation about ethics and practices around sensitive photojournalism. Likewise, there is no data or statistics to back up what was found; rather, it’s embedded in context and nuance, as are the photos. Photojournalism produces a lot of gray areas, yet, it’s still important to understand it from both perspectives, one through numbers and one through context.
Which approach do you prefer? Everyone is different, where some prefer to see and understand through data, while others seek to understand through context. When it comes to life decisions and ethical dilemmas, I have to say I prefer a more qualitative approach, one that’s rooted in context, especially when looking at ethics in photojournalism. I think between the two the interviews provided a richer look at what it’s like when choosing to take these captivating images and the decision whether or not to publish them. In all, I think it led to a more poignant discussion on the ethics of photojournalism, whether or not any verifiable data was produced, and included one thing that, in my opinion, can’t be left out: context.
