Re-imagining the quantitative-qualitative relationship through colouring and anchoring

Abstract

Across journalism, numbers and non-numbers are used in conjunction with each other in the process of storytelling. When literature within journalism studies examines this relationship, it tends to focus on how numbers contextualise the specific anecdote or how numbers provide scale to individual accounts. Both explanations rest on a specific-general paradigm that underpins much of the way academics research and theorise the topic. In this article, I reconceptualise the relationship between the quantitative and the qualitative through two metaphors that emerged during my interviews with journalists regarding their coverage of humanitarian crises. In doing so, I set my study within the long history of using metaphors in journalism studies. First, I point to the metaphor of colouring to outline how we can reimagine storytelling as the combination of data that provides form and shape and the personal that colours this structure. Second, I explore the metaphor of anchoring to appreciate the journalistic practice of connecting subjective personal accounts with the ontological solidity of data. I conclude by highlighting the differences between these two metaphors and the specific-general paradigm, whilst also pointing to the ramifications of my article for journalism studies and mediated ethics.

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