Innovative Methods in Media and Communication Research

by Sebastian Kubitschko (Editor), Anne Kaun (Editor)

Overview

This collection reflects the need for suitable methods to answer emerging questions that result from the ever-changing media environment. As media technologies and infrastructures become inseparably interwoven with social constellations, scholars from varying disciplines increasingly investigate their characteristics, functioning, relevance and impact – facing new methodological challenges as well as opportunities. Innovative Methods in Media and Communication Research engages with the substantial need to rethink established methods to research acute changes in the media environment. The book gathers chapters dedicated to the multifacetedness and liveliness of emerging methods – from lifelogging and ethnography to digital methods and visualization – while embedding them in the rich history of interdisciplinary empirical research. Innovation here is a call for widening and rethinking research methods to stimulate a sophisticated debate on and exploration of contemporary methodological approaches for scholars at various levels of academic life. Accompanied by introductory sections of prominent scholars, the majority of empirical studies gathered in this volume are accomplished through early-career scholars who strive to advance cutting-edge and in parts even provocative approaches for the study of media and communication. The book's four sections on Materiality, Technology, Experience and Visualization are introduced by Saskia Sassen, Noortje Marres, Sarah Pink and Lev Manovich.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319407005
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	12/26/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	330
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sebastian Kubitschko is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bremen’s Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, Germany. The main focus of his research is on hacker cultures, politics and democratic constellations. Sebastian holds degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK (PhD), the University of Melbourne, Australia (MA) and the Free University of Berlin, Germany (BA).

Anne Kaun is an associate professor in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research is concerned with media and political activism and the role of technology for political participation from a historical perspective. Anne holds degrees from Örebro University and Södertörn University, Sweden (PhD) and the University of Leipzig, Germany (MA).

Table of Contents

An introduction to innovative methods in media and communication research. Sebastian Kubitschko and Anne Kaun.- Part I: Materiality. Introduced by Saskia Sassen: The assemblages within which the digital functions.- 1.Jess Baines.The value, challenges and contradictions of instigating the open wiki radicalprintshops.org.- 2.Erin Despard.A materialist media ecological approach to studying urban media in/of place.- 3.Segah Sak.Socio-Spatial approaches for media and communication research.- Part II: Technology. Introduced by Noortje Marres: Title.- 4.Taina Bucher.Neither black nor box: Ways of knowing algorithms.- 5.Pablo R. Velasco.Sketching Bitcoin: Empirical research of digital affordances.- 6.Richard Huskey.Beyond blobology: Using psychophysiological interaction analyses to investigate the neural basis of human communication phenomena.- 7.Alberto Frigo.As we should think? Lifelogging as a re-emerging method.- Part III: Experience. Introduced by Sarah Pink: Digital ethnography.- 8.Emily LaDue.Visual ethnography and the city: On the dead ends of reflexivity and gentrification.- 9.Paola Sartoretto.Exploring inclusive ethnography as a methodology to account for multiple experiences.- 10.Neha Kumar.Interviewing against odds.- Part IV: Visualization. Introduced by Lev Manovich: Visualizing media.- 11.Jonathan Gray, Liliana Bounegru, Stefania Milan and Paolo Ciuccarelli.Ways of seeing data: Towards a critical literacy for data visualizations as research objects and research devices.- 12.Luca Simeone and Paolo Patelli.Urban Sensing: potential and limitations of social network analysis and data visualization as research methods in urban studies.- 13.Nicolas Baya-Laffite and Jean-Philippe Cointet.Mapping topics in international climate negotiations: a computer-assisted semantic network approach.- 14.Katharina Lobinger.‘Creative’ and participatory visual approaches in audience research.- 15.Innovative methods in media and communication research: An outlook.Anne Kaun and Sebastian Kubitschko 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book breathes fresh air onto established research methods, as well as introducing some new ones. It is an excellent resource for opening up discussion with our students about pushing methodological boundaries. I’m sure many of us will draw on it liberally as we teach and think about the important issue of how to do media and communications research now and in the future.” (Helen Kennedy, University of Sheffield, UK)

“Informative and inviting, this book opens a new window full of cutting-edge innovations and, more important, critical perspectives to think about methodological breakthroughs in digital media research. I can’t wait to use this book in my graduate seminars.” (Jack Linchuan Qiu, Ph.D. Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

“Across the sprawling and diverse domain of media and communication research, digital methods have emerged and evolved alongside the digitisation of communication at all scales. Atthe same time, new advances and hybrid practices in qualitative and creative sociocultural research more broadly have occurred across the humanities and social sciences. In this vibrant, multidisciplinary collection, an international cohort of established and emerging authors model, explore and interrogate the cutting edge of these shifts.” (Jean Burgess, QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology)