ABSTRACT
Two methodological approaches to churnalism can be distinguished in terms of three sets of tensions: offline versus online procedures for data collection; textual versus participant driven procedures for data analysis; and empirical breadth and statistical significance versus empirical depth and qualitative insight. The first approach content analyzes news texts by freezing news flows. The focus is on large samples of semiotic material (usually textual) which are then coded, quantified, or qualified. The second approach tracks, documents, and maps news flows across time and space. This approach often uses mixed methods to qualify professional practices from the perspectives of participants or to model the complexity and contingency of news flows in real time. The methodology of real-time tracking and virtual lurking highlights the writing process as an under-researched, but, as a result of keystroke logging software, researchable feature of journalistic practice in real time. Rough transcripts were made of the screen videos and the retrospective interviews.
