Jensen, K. B. (Ed.) (2012). Handbook of media and communication research: Qualitative and quantitative methodologies (2^nd edition). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203357255

The approach to media and communication research, as laid out in the Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (2^nd edition), edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen in 2012, has sustained its relevance. This is mainly because the handbook positions all components of the communication process (media production, messages, users, and contexts) in the socio-historical contexts of communication technologies, which, in turn, are contingent on socio-political and economic contexts and developments. The handbook’s convincing approach made it a must-read for students and scholars in the field of media and communication research, as it offers a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of media and communication research, including origins and practices of both qualitative and quantitative research in the field (see also Beyens, 2013, p. 445). The 2012 handbook was an update of the 2002 first edition, and included additional chapters on innovations in the communication and media landscape at the time: development of the internet, mobile and other digital media. For the book to remain relevant today, a third edition was published in 2020, extending its focus to today’s media and communication innovations–and their implications for the three parts by which the book is organized: history, that is, historical accounts of key concepts and research traditions; communication processes, in all its components; and empirical approaches, both qualitative and quantitative. Notably, the third part of the third edition was complemented by a chapter on digital methods (Helles, 2020). The chapter is dedicated to lessons learned in media and communication research when the digital is used as a site and an instrument for research. The author focuses on the question of what can and cannot be known through digital data and does so by discussing ethical considerations when working with big data, data mining techniques, archiving tools, and challenges of algorithmic curation inherent to recommendation systems and other digital systems.

Regarding media production, the handbook pointed out innovations in both the entertainment media and news industries: “When a book may become a movie that becomes a television series that becomes a theme park ride that becomes a video game that becomes a line of toys, production researchers find themselves involved with a new set of issues” (Lotz and Newcomb, 2012, p. 85). According to the handbook, research therefore needs to focus on the figuration of media organizations, and the large-scale economic conditions in which creative organizations are embedded and to which they respond. As such, the handbook described digitalization as a disruptive force, urging media industries to compete in global media systems (Lotz and Newcomb, 2012). In a similar manner, news production and journalism are subject to developments that affected cultural industries. In 2012 the handbook signaled that online journalism induced high levels of uncertainty about democracy, business models, and about the newspaper-audience relationship, as readership of paid newspapers was declining and online journalism altered the routines and required skills of journalists (Hjarvard, 2012, p. 99). Also, new media’s ability to enable audiences to play a considerably more active role in news production opened the door to citizen journalism, user-generated content, and gate watching as relevant phenomena to media and communication scholars. The handbook also addressed globalization by showing the decreasing dominance of national broadcast systems in favor of a multi-media global communication environment, as broadcasters creatively searched for new (media) products to sell in new markets and users engaged increasingly in multiple device use, with YouTube transforming the meaning of the production and circulation of television content (Scannell, 2012).

The handbook argued in 2012 that technologies of communication are drivers of historical change and therefore the historical impact of technological innovation should be at the heart of media and communication research (Scannell, 2012, p. 234). In this sense, the handbook’s authors foresaw that global media players in the digitalized society would call for media and communication research that focuses on the nature and consequences of new communication technologies. Therefore, for the handbook to be relevant today, the third edition’s focus was extended to the themes of big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and personalization, and could be further extended to questions regarding privacy, fake news, and trustworthiness–in a post-pandemic world in which polarization, cancel culture, climate change, and (corporate) social responsibility need to be navigated.

In the period after the publication of the second edition of Jensen’s handbook, the device of the smartphone heralded an area of mobile and personalized communication, causing screens to move “from our desktop to our pockets” (Neijens and Valkenburg, 2024, p. 36), making media users permanently connected online, and media and communication increasingly becoming part of all aspects of everyday life. Mobile apps allow users to efficiently navigate everyday life (work, travel, care, and social relations) or shape life-style choices (car sharing, workout, rescue meals, recycle; see Neijens and Valkenburg, 2024, p. 40). Consequently, a trend towards increased interest in the personalization of media content tailored to user characteristics can be identified as well as the blurring of boundaries between content genres, such as between informative vs. entertaining vs. persuasive, and professional vs. non-professional (Neijens and Valkenburg, 2024, p. 40). The amount of personalized data generated has grown tremendously–both consciously disclosed by online media users as well as implicitly when personality traits are inferred from a person’s shares and likes, language used, or emotional states disclosed online (Van Noort et al., 2024, p. 190). As a result, today personalized data are valuable in the eyes of media and communication researchers and for institutions both with public and commercial interest. Personalizing content and delivery increases its effectiveness; at the same time personalized content triggers a sense of privacy violation and is a potential for algorithmic manipulation and surveillance, depending on the extent to which data are perceived as personal (Van Noort et al., 2024). As of around 2015, big data enabled media applications to collect large amounts of user data, and, at the same time, AI (using algorithms, augmented/virtual reality, and conversational agents) started operating through these applications (Neijens and Valkenburg, 2024). Engagement with big data and AI has opened a growth in new computational methods, such as automated content analysis and machine learning, and introduced challenges ranging from algorithmic bias, discrimination, privacy concerns, misinformation, and manipulation (Neijens and Valkenburg, 2024, p. 36). In future versions of Jensen’s handbook, indeed, questions regarding authenticity (what is real?) will deserve continued attention due to the increased accessibility of generative AI for texts (such as ChatGPT starting in 2022), audio, and images (such as image generation based on text prompts in Dall-E; see De Vreese, 2024, p. 226; Trilling et al., 2024, p. 252).

Still relevant today are the established social science and media studies research methods for the study of media production (creative industries, news), texts (faction and fiction), users (studies on media effect, lifestyle, and media reception), and contexts (historical, cultural) that are at the center of part three of Jensen’s handbook. Even so, communication and media researchers have intensified their interest in computational approaches, both for data acquisition, such as scraping, tracking, and data donation, and for data analysis, such as machine learning (Trilling et al., 2024, p. 250). This interest is also boosted by the increased availability of data in digital formats, the personalized character of media content, and by media content no longer being produced by media institutions only and thus increasingly seen as reflecting behavioral data.

Research on mobile and personalized communication as well as on big data and AI requires that the field of communication science and media studies becomes even more interdisciplinary than is advocated for in Jensen’s handbook. Jensen emphasized the importance of humanistic and social science roots feeding into the interdisciplinary field of media and communication studies. Today, other disciplines such as informatics, robotics, human rights expertise, information law, health science, and engineering, have become increasingly relevant, too, to fully understand how media and communication play a role in all layers of our globalized and digitalized society.

Another requirement for future-proof communication and media research practices would be building bridges to societal partners, as societal impact is increasingly seen as essential to scholarly and academic assignments throughout all phases of the research endeavor (see, for instance, https://www.eur.nl/en/research/research-services/societal-impact-evaluation/impact-toolbox). In this respect, Jensen’s listing of players in the field of media and communication research in the handbook’s concluding chapter could be enriched by also positioning societal partners, as well as envisioned societal impacts. This would co-create a rationale for research agendas and research questions, for participatory research methods such as citizen science, and for opening new ways of sharing research outputs and implications thereof for both individuals, social groups, institutions, society, and the planet at large.