The Importance of Empirical Research in Social Theory

I always had a very strong interest in combining it with empirical research. Either sort of empirical research being at the very beginning and stimulating conceptual thinking or having certain conceptual ideas and then seeing how they can be explored empirically. So for instance, in my PhD, I worked on global media events which in a sense combined an interest in network research on media messages by likewise, if you also looked into the production of meaning making. And looking at these subjects from such an interdisciplinary perspective has enabled me to work across a variety of different academic disciplines. It's something as a kind of you know trajectory that I've tried to develop further and in a sense that has informed the work on the book project