In defense of qualitative description: reclaiming “little t” theory as a site of knowledge advancement

Abstract This article problematizes post-positivism’s stronghold on the mass communication canon and defends the use of qualitative description as a legitimate methodology for media scholarship. We present evidence that our field’s gatekeepers have prioritized research that advances what we call Big-T social science theories—those recognizable, named theories with testable, generalizable explanatory power—rather than the context-specific little t theories associated with qualitative description. We link this trend with the systematic underrepresentation of emic research, especially from the Global South. Qualitative description allows scholars to explore emerging research contexts and build trust with research participants, setting ground for future theory advancement. We present a framework for doing qualitative description in mass communication, and we offer clarifications for how this approach differs from other theoretical work driven by qualitative communication research methods.