Rehbein and Pfeiffer (2006) or even media neglect (Pfeiffer 2003) to substantiate. The present dissertation project aims to outline an alternative both theoretically and practically to the currently opposing positivist and interpretative approaches in media reception research (Schrøder, Drotner, Kline, Murray 2003) and to pave the way for an empirically grounded media criticism without resorting to positivist positions. Critical Realism (Bhaskar 1978, 1998; Danermark et al. 2002), whose central aspects for empirical media research will be presented below, has long been offered as a third way (Pavitt 1999) in the international debate for empirical social sciences and has already been discussed in political science (Sayer 1997), economics (Lawson 1997), and evaluation research (Pawson 2006).