This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method often practiced but little understood. A “case study,” I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of covariational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodological tradeoffs that this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses—affinities—rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs.

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What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for

Electronic word-of-mouth in hospitality and tourism management

This special issue of Journal of Communication is devoted to theoretical explanations of news framing, agenda setting, and priming effects. It examines if and how the three models are related and what potential relationships between them tell theorists and researchers about the effects of mass media. As an introduction to this effort, this essay provides a very brief review of the three effects and their roots in media-effects research. Based on this overview, we highlight a few key dimensions along which one can compare, framing, agenda setting, and priming. We conclude with a description of the contexts within which the three models operate, and the broader implications that these conceptual distinctions have for the growth of our discipline. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00326.x In 1997, Republican pollster Frank Luntz sent out a 222-page memo called ‘‘Language of the 21st century’’ to select members of the U.S. Congress. Parts of the memo soon spread among staffers, members of Congress, and also journalists. Luntz’s message was simple: ‘‘It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’’ (Luntz, in press). Drawing on various techniques for real-time message testing and focus grouping, Frank Luntz had researched Republican campaign messages and distilled terms and phrases that resonated with specific interpretive schemas among audiences and therefore helped shift people’s attitudes. In other words, the effect of the messages was not a function of content differences but of differences in the modes of presentation. The ideas outlined in the memo were hardly new, of course, and drew on decades of existing research in sociology (Goffman, 1974), economics (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), psychology (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984), cognitive linguistics (Lakoff, 2004), and communication (Entman, 1991; Iyengar, 1991). But Frank Luntz was the first professional pollster to systematically use the concept of framing as a campaign tool. The Democratic Party soon followed and George Lakoff published Don’t Think of an

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Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models

Two classes of network models are used to reanalyze a sociological classic often cited as evidence of social contagion in the diffusion of technological innovation: Medical Innovation. Debate between the cohesion and structural equivalence models poses the following question for study: Did the physicians resolve the uncertainty of adopting the new drug through conversations with colleagues (cohesion) or through their perception of the action proper for an occupant of their position in the social structure of colleagues (structural equivalence)? The alternative models are defined, compared, and tested. Four conclusions are drawn: (a) Contagion was not the dominant factor driving tetracyclene's diffusion. Where there is evidence of contagion, there is evidence of personal preferences at work.

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Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equivalence

Studying influences on media content beyond processes and effects analyzing media content patterns of media content influences on content from individual media workers influence of media routines organizational influences on content influences on content from outside of media organizations the influence of ideology linking influences on content to the effects of content building a theory of news content.

Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content

Die von Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson und Hazel Gaudet 1944 veroffentlichte Studie The people’s choice untersucht den Prasidentschaft swahlkampf in den USA 1940. Analysiert wird: „How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign”. Die Entstehung individueller Wahlentscheidungen und der Einfluss von Informationen verschiedener Quellen, u. a. der Medien wurden mittels eines fur die Zeit revolutionaren Paneldesigns untersucht. Die Studie begrundet einen Meilenstein in der kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Forschung, da sie den Grundstein fur einen Paradigmenwechsel legt, namlich die Abkehr von der Annahme des Publikums als Masse, die den Einflussen der Massenmedien ausgeliefert ist, hin zu den „limited effects“ der Medien. Ausschlaggebend fur diesen Paradigmenwechsel waren drei in The people’s choice vorgestellte Konzepte, die auch heute noch in der Kommunikationswissenschaft diskutiert werden: Die These der selektiven Zuwendung des Publikums zu Medieninhalten, das Konzept der Meinungsfuhrer und die These vom Zweistufenfluss der Kommunikation. In diesem Beitrag werden der Inhalt des Werkes sowie die Kritik daran mit Fokus auf diese drei Konzepte vorgestellt.

The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign

В своей классической работе «Выбор народа» группа авторов под руководством Пола Лазарсфельда впервые комплексно исследует влияние масс медиа на электоральное поведение на примере президентской кампании Рузвельта-Уилки 1940 года. На протяжении семи месяцев авторы опрашивают около 3000 респондентов и приходят к выводу, что мнение большинства людей зависит не напрямую от СМИ, а от других членов их первичных групп, которые и являются активными потребителями медиа-продукции. Этих людей авторы назвали прочно вошедшим в научный обиход термином «лидеры мнения».

Hazel Gaudet

Papers

The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign

The people's choice.

Wahlen und Wähler: Soziologie des Wahlverhaltens

Who Gets a Job