A comparative approach to media and communication research plays an important, if not indispensable, role in achieving a core mission of researchers: to delimit the generality and specificity of media and communication theories, enabling researchers to more readily identify the influence of social, political and cultural contexts in shaping media and communication phenomena. To de-Westernize and internationalize media and communication studies has thus become the way forward for overcoming the parochialism of mainstream media and communication studies. This volume reflects on what comparative media and communication research has achieved or failed to achieve, the epistemological and theoretical challenges it is facing, and the new directions in which it should be heading.

The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of comparative communication research. It fills an obvious gap in the literature and offers an extensive and interdisciplinary discussion of the general approach of comparative research, its prospect and problems as well as its applications in crucial sub-fields of communications. The first part of the volume charts the state of the art in the field; the second section introduces relevant areas of communication studies where the comparative approach has been successfully applied in recent years; the third part offers an analytical review of conceptual and methodological issues; and the last section proposes a roadmap for future research.

Throughout this book, Edelstein stresses why and how comparative communication research should be done. Highlighting major conceptual and methodological approaches, he provides useful summaries of the major comparative studies performed to date--and pinpoint promising new directions for research and conceptualization. This perceptive look at the state of the art in comparative communications research will serve as a valuable text for courses exploring international communications--as well as a serviceable handbook for researchers and specialists in communications, cross-cultural studies, and popular culture and values.

This book provides an authoritative state-of-the-art review of comparative approaches to communication research in the context of time and location. Perspectives unique to mass, interpersonal, political, cultural and organizational communication are explored, while descriptions of well-known empirical projects reveal how collaborations worked and how problems were addressed across different periods and cultures. Comparatively Speaking serves both as a student text and as a stimulus to further research in comparative communication research.

By using a wide diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches and by encompassing both cross-national and longitudinal analyses, this volume sheds new light on comparative political communication research, such as personalization, globalization, democratization, and the changing nature of journalism,

Comparative research has gained enormous popularity in communication and media studies in the last two decades and is increasingly conducted in international research teams. Collaboration with scholars from different countries brings many advantages, but it is also prone to conflict. Sophia Charlotte Volk presents the first systematic reflection on the conceptual, methodological, and social challenges of international collaborative and comparative studies in communication science. A systematic review of comparative studies and expert interviews with communication scholars shed light on how challenges manifest themselves empirically and what solutions have proven to be appropriate. The book proposes a phase model of collaborative and comparative research that can serve as a guide for scholars on what conditions should be created for productive collaboration in temporary research projects.

Thoroughly revised and updated, this third edition integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities, focusing on methodology as a strategic level of analysis that joins practical applications with theoretical issues. The Handbook comprises three main elements: historical accounts of the development of key concepts and research traditions; systematic reviews of media organizations, discourses, and users, as well as of the wider social and cultural contexts of communication; and practical guidelines with sample studies, taking readers through the different stages of a research process and reflecting on the social uses and consequences of research. Updates to this edition include: An overview of the interrelations between networked, mass, and interpersonal communication. A new chapter on digital methods. Three chapters illustrating different varieties of media and communication research, including industry–academic collaboration and participatory action research. Presentation and discussion of public issues such as surveillance and the reconfiguration of local and global media institutions. This book is an invaluable reference work for students and researchers in the fields of media, communication, and cultural studies.

This book brings together fresh evidence and new theoretical frameworks in a unique analysis of the increasing role of social media in political campaigns and electoral processes across Africa. Supported by contemporary and historical cases studies, it engages with the main drives behind the various appropriations of social media for election campaigns, organization, and voter mobilization. Contributors in this volume delve into changing and complex aspects of social media, offering an appraisal of theoretical perspectives and examining fascinating case studies which social media use is redefining elections across Africa. Contributions show that new media ecologies are resulting in new policy regimes, user behaviors, and communication models that have implications for electoral processes. The book also provides preliminary analysis of emerging forms of algorithm-driven campaigns, fake news, information distortions and other methods that undermine electoral democracy in Africa.

«Strictly speaking», James Carey wrote, «there is no history of mass communication research.» This volume is a long-overdue response to Carey's comment about the field's ignorance of its own past. The collection includes essays of historiographical self-scrutiny, as well as new histories that trace the field's institutional evolution and cross-pollination with other academic disciplines. The volume treats the remembered past of mass communication research as crucial terrain where boundaries are marked off and futures plotted. The collection, intended for scholars and advanced graduate students, is an essential compass for the field.

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.