Looking at me, looking at you: qualitative research and the politics of knowledge representations in advertising and academia

Takes a somewhat reflexive look at the politics of qualitative research in advertising and draws some analogies with academic research in marketing. The main basis for the discussion is a qualitative study of advertising which utilised a discourse analytic approach to dyadic depth interviews within a social, constructionist, ontological framework. The findings from the study drew attention to the political as opposed to epistemological problems of legitimisation for qualitative forms of understanding. Where qualitative forms of knowledge and understanding are considered legitimate, the social order of power relations within the organisation changes.