Ien Ang - Methodology

Methodology

Ang relies heavily on the use qualitative case studies to illustrate her research instead of using quantitative methods to analyse audiences as was popular. Her first book Watching Dallas relied on the letters of 42 Dutch viewers of the popular television soap Dallas. Ang writes of the her analytical method for the letters; they “cannot be taken at face value, ‘they should be read ‘symptomatically’: we must search for what is behind the explicitly written, for the presuppositions and accepted attitudes concealed within them. In other words the letters must be regarded as texts, as discourses people produce when they want to express or have to account for their own preference…” Furthermore Ang does not attempt to generalise or triangulate the cases study in order to apply it to other cases instead arguing that it was sufficient to illustrate the audience response to Dallas in this instance alone, a style which is increasing in popularity. Ang pioneered this method whilst other practitioners were developing pseudo scientific models to apply to the social sciences, Louise Spence a fellow soap opera researcher, praises Ang's methodological style: “She had to redefine the position of the analyst and the language of analysis, challenging the once-dominant ideal of a detached observer using neutral language to describe ‘brute facts’, demystifying the idea of any strict separation of theory and data. Her effort reminds us that researchers are neither innocent nor omniscient”