ABSTRACT
When studying communication, scholars focus on some types of data and do so from some particular point of view. At this moment of our intellectual history, communication data can be generated virtually everywhere including face-to-face encounters, online news and comedy, through a variety of mobile technologies, in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways, including visual and acoustical signals. What the most salient data are, how they are identified, and what can be said about them are questions communication scholars, in the course of their studies, raise and address. These are important concerns because, as scholars consider them, their studies gain their toe-hold so-to-speak, through “data,” in personal and social realities. While collecting and analyzing data are crucial parts of the research process, there is much more involved than this, or much more surrounding these specific decisions.
