Resumen

This is a discussion about how research methodologies in social sciences have changed at the same time as the search for the scientific status of communication has done. At a given moment, social sciences assumed some sort of research technologies as necessary, giving a key role to certain prescribed, regulated and strict research techniques. This generated the necessity for researchers to look for the advice of a specialized academic: “the methodologist”. Later on, paired with the discussions about epistemology, theories and ideologies, a paralellism and duality between qualitative and quantitative appeared, with irreconcilable defenders and attackers on each side. While doing so, they were also trying to solve their differences dealing ideology and politics, with —or through— methodological options. A sort of truce came later on, and with it, an explosion of research alternatives with a large diversity, both in the types of users as well as in their consequences as far as their contribution to our field of knowledge. Nowadays, it is possible to identify the characteristics of a path that goes from idolatry to disenchantment, deregulation, or disbelieve; and from there to a new kind of idolatry around non-ruled methodologies.