A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies / Edition 2

by Klaus Bruhn Jensen

Overview

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research presents qualitative as well as quantitative approaches to the study of media and communication, integrating perspectives from both the social sciences and the humanities. Taking methodology as a strategic level of analysis that joins practical concerns with theoretical issues, the Handbook offers a comprehensive and in-depth review of the field and a set of guidelines for how to think about, plan, and carry out media and communication studies in different social and cultural contexts.

The Handbook comprises three main elements:

• a historical account of the development of key concepts and research traditions
• a systematic section covering media organizations, texts, and users, as well as the wider social and cultural contexts of media use
• a practical element, taking readers through the various stages of a research process, including illustrative studies, and reflecting on the uses of research in different social sectors.

Written by internationally acknowledged specialists and supported throughout by keywords, updated references, and graphic models, the Handbook provides a standard reference work for students and researchers in the fields of media, communication, and cultural studies.

The second edition of the Handbook has been thoroughly updated with reference to the development of the internet, mobile, and other digital media.

• Each chapter addresses shifting configurations of established media organizations, media discourses, and media users in networked practices of communication.
• The introduction and one further chapter probe changing conceptions on mass and interpersonal, online and offline communication – in research as in everyday life.
• Three new chapters have been added to exemplify different forms of research employing multiple methods to study multiple media in multiple contexts.

List of contributors:

Barrie Gunter, Stig Hjarvard, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Peter Larsen, Amanda D. Lotz, Graham Murdock, Horace Newcomb, Kim Christian Schroder, Paddy Scannell, Gaye Tuchman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415609661
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/02/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	7.44(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Klaus Bruhn Jensen is Professor in the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a member of the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism; Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research; Comunicacion y Sociedad (Mexico); and MATRIZes (Brazil); and Corresponding Editor for the European Journal of Communication. Life Member for Service of the Association of Internet Researchers and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute. Recent publications include contributions to the International Encyclopedia of Communication (12 vols, 2008 http://www.communicationencyclopedia.com), for which he serves as Area Editor of Communication Theory and Philosophy, and Media Convergence: The Three Degrees of Network, Mass, and Interpersonal Communication (Routledge, 2010).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The state of convergence in media and communication research PART I HISTORY: SOURCES OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH 2. The humanities in media and communication research 3. Media, culture, and modern times: Social science investigations PART II SYSTEMATICS: PROCESSES OF MEDIATED COMMUNICATION 4. The production of media fiction 5. The production of news 6. The study of international news 7. Discourses of fact 8. Mediated fiction Media audiences 9. Media effects: Quantitative traditions 10. Media reception: Qualitative traditions 11. Contexts, cultures, and computers: The cultural contexts of mediated communication 12. History, media, and communication PART III PRACTICE: SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES AND SOCIAL APPLICATIONS 13. The quantitative research process 14. The qualitative research process 15. The complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in media and communication research 16. The social origins and uses of media and communication research

Editorial Reviews

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research presents an excellent overview of and introduction to the concepts and elements with major quantitative and qualitative research processes.

Marit Bakke

This Handbook takes on a full range of communication research approaches with an intelligence, skill, and agility not found in methodology texts.

Vincent Mosco

An authoritative, stimulating and rigorous survey of diverse research traditions in media and communications. The emphasis on identifying the potential for convergence across these traditions is both original and welcome.

Sonia Livingston

This is a great example of interdisciplinarity at work.

Elihu Katz, Annenberg School of Communication

This new edition offers a historical, philosophical, topical, and methodologica overview that manages to be both deep and wide-ranging. It will be of tremendous use for students and others seeking a better understanding of communication as both a topic and a field.

 

Nancy Baym, University of Kansas

 

As society becomes ever more mediated, reliant on and reconfigured by complex and fastchanging digital technologies, academic analysis is urgently in need of fresh thinking. Look no further: this volume offers a wealth of insightful concepts, critical questions and intellectual traditions to revitalise our field. Through a rigorous historical grounding, it simultaneously integrates and yet distinguishes among key approaches to pose a new research agenda for the digital world.

 

Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science.

 

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research is a guiding light of interdisciplinarity, arising from both the humanities and the social sciences. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and his stellar co-authors guide us through the various genres of media and communication (news, entertainment, etc.), as well as the effects of interpersonal media, mass media, and everything in-between. They look at how we study the phenomenon (qualitative, quantitative, digital), its cultural and historical dimensions, as well as the position of media industries. The book is a welcome beacon for all students and scholars navigating the current state of media and communication.

 

Rich Ling, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This is a great example of interdisciplinarity at work.

Elihu Katz, Annenberg School of Communication

This new edition offers a historical, philosophical, topical, and methodologica overview that manages to be both deep and wide-ranging. It will be of tremendous use for students and others seeking a better understanding of communication as both a topic and a field.

 

Nancy Baym, University of Kansas

 

As society becomes ever more mediated, reliant on and reconfigured by complex and fastchanging digital technologies, academic analysis is urgently in need of fresh thinking. Look no further: this volume offers a wealth of insightful concepts, critical questions and intellectual traditions to revitalise our field. Through a rigorous historical grounding, it simultaneously integrates and yet distinguishes among key approaches to pose a new research agenda for the digital world.

 

Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science.

 

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research is a guiding light of interdisciplinarity, arising from both the humanities and the social sciences. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and his stellar co-authors guide us through the various genres of media and communication (news, entertainment, etc.), as well as the effects of interpersonal media, mass media, and everything in-between. They look at how we study the phenomenon (qualitative, quantitative, digital), its cultural and historical dimensions, as well as the position of media industries. The book is a welcome beacon for all students and scholars navigating the current state of media and communication.

 

Rich Ling, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

 

From the Publisher