ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the collection of data that are more concerned with a deep understanding of some person’s, event’s, or company’s communication. This deep dive into the communication might be seen as “counting to one” again and again to understand the value of communication from an individual’s, group’s, or larger organization’s point of view. We present how qualitative approaches differ from their quantitative brethren and then examine the major methodological tools available to the qualitative researcher: participant observation, interviews (structured and semi-structured), focus groups, textual analysis, autoethnography, and physical traces and archives.
