Convergence, Globalization, Technological Development, and Interdisciplinarity in a Fast-Evolving World

The Formidable Question of Method

Fabienne Darling-Wolf

The fast pace of technological development in the past few decades has rendered the task of media studies scholars particularly complex. The spread of print and electronic media, cable and satellite technology, and most recently the development of the Internet, “social media,”¹ and other forms of digital communication which facilitate the convergence of previously separate media forms have profoundly reshaped and continue to influence the way in which media are produced and negotiated in individuals' daily lives. These developments are generating both opportunities and challenges for researchers intent on exploring the role of media in society, whether they are concerned with processes of production and distribution, with narrative content, or with audience interpretation.

Volumes 1 through 6 of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies have discussed these challenges and reflected upon the evolution of the field from multiple perspectives, focusing respectively on media history, media production, content and representation, audience and interpretation, media effects/psychology, and media studies' futures. The shifting nature of contemporary media contexts, and its potential implications for media studies, are a running theme throughout the project, leading Kelly Gates (2013) to conclude in her introduction to Volume 6 that “radical uncertainty and contingency are the only features that define where media studies are headed” (p. 2; see also Nerone, 2013, p. 14). Taken as a whole, the encyclopedia also illustrates, however, media studies scholars' continuing commitment “to embrace and respect a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives . . . to remain open to evolving and refining our research questions, and to consider that perhaps we need to ask new questions as the technology and content evolve” (Mazzarella, 2013, p. 15).

Situating its discussions of the methodologies employed in media studies within this transformative moment, Research Methods in Media Studies, the seventh and concluding volume of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, showcases the work of scholars who critically reflect on these questions' impact on the process of inquiry. Recognizing that “new” developments must be considered in relation to their historical antecedents and to enduring dynamics (Gates, 2013; Livingstone, 2004; Sterne, 2007), it makes the case that a critical focus on methods, whether long established or emerging, remains a central and necessary component of international media studies.

Discussions of methodology are certainly present in the encyclopedia's other volumes. The range of methods authors employ in each book to explore various dimensions of the media – historical methods, interviews, participant observation, ethnography, surveys, text-based approaches, as well as emerging methods developed to address new media forms – have started to illustrate the diversity of approaches with which media studies scholars routinely engage. They attest to the expanding and multidisciplinary nature of the field – and I agree with Nordenstreng that it “remains rather a field than a discipline” (2004, p. 6). None of the volumes, however, has focused solely on research methods per se – from the nuts and bolts of developing a study to the questions of whether “old” tools can apply to new contexts and, if not, of how to develop new ones. A volume entirely focused on these issues is, thus, a logical final step.

Taken together, the chapters collated here sketch a thorough, analytical, and historically contextualized account of the evolving and innovative nature of media studies methodologies. They revisit long established practices and illustrate their continuing productive potential, tackle ethical questions, reflect on past and current challenges, and offer new directions of inquiry. The volume outlines the productive potential that lies, from a methodological point of view, in media studies' long history of interdisciplinary engagement across social disciplines. Indeed, in a time when the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions becomes a necessary condition to remaining relevant, the historical and current theoretical and methodological diversity of media studies research arises as a definite advantage – an advantage that I hope this volume will encourage scholars to further exploit in the future.

Just as the media are converging in terms of ownership, technologies, and audiences, media studies research has, for some time now, been moving toward a “steady convergence of theoretical orientations and methodological approaches” as “[p]ositivists have recognized the necessity to adopt methodologies that are more effective at representing and measuring audiences' involvement with and interpretations of media content,” while “critical and interpretivist researchers have acknowledged that in order properly to understand audiences, it is necessary, at least some of the time, to obtain data directly from them” (Gunter, 2000, p. 22). The volume is thus intentionally not divided along quantitative and qualitative lines of inquiry. As media and methodologies converge, this binary is not proving particularly useful (if it ever was). In Chapter 1 of this volume Slavko Splichal and Peter Dahlgren remind us that “The decisions as to whether it is appropriate to choose qualitative and/or quantitative methods should be based on the respective probabilities of obtaining the evidence being sought, and no method can be a priori excluded as inappropriate, whether quantitative or qualitative.” The essays included here powerfully illustrate the increasing and often necessary blurring of the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of research. They collectively make a case for the productive potential of shedding these methodological straitjackets in order to find more supple ways to explore the multimodal, fluid, and heterogeneous nature of contemporary media contexts.

Finally, they point to the continuing and perhaps increasingly essential need to link method to theory. All authors, regardless of their methodological orientation, aptly recognize that the two are inextricably intertwined. Their vigorous engagement with epistemological questions and power dynamics both in media practice and in the process of conducting research is a distinctive feature and key contribution of the book. Arguing that “new modes of digital communication . . . challenge the belief that it is possible to clearly separate methodology from theory,” Splichal and Dahlgren set up the tone for the rest of the volume when they conclude that these developments “make critical reflection and development in regard to theory all the more imperative.”

Situating Research Methods in Media Studies

A complete discussion of the multidimensional repercussions of the developments mentioned above on all areas of media studies research is beyond the scope of this brief introduction, and a more detailed exploration of the historical evolution of the field (and of the impact of this evolution on research methods) is provided in Chapter 1 of this volume. A few points, however, are worth noting here for their particularly thorny practical implications for the process of developing and applying research methods in media studies.

First, the multiple levels of convergence that define our media landscape are raising, as Gates puts it, “formidable questions of methodology” (2013, p. 10). Noting that the very definition of “media” becomes problematic when “media are so many different things” (p. 7), Gates concludes that “[t]he sheer quantity of media available seems to overwhelm the possibility of conducting effective studies that can be generalized beyond very limited contexts” (p. 10). Indeed, how and where are we to analyze the role of media in individuals' lives when “people with adequate connectivity have access to a dizzying array of media forms and content” (p. 10)? How do we sort out individuals' “complex and potentially idiosyncratic experiences” in a context in which media use “occurs at virtually any location and time of day” (Scharrer, 2013, p. 3)? Equally importantly, when operating from an environment in which “adequate connectivity” is mostly taken for granted, how do we find ways to include the 50% of the global population that does not “[luxuriate] in a wealth of networks and technology” (Valdivia in her Introduction to this volume)? How do we define a text when media forms are simultaneously distributed on multiple platforms? Which platforms do we analyze and at what point in time? What do we do about the ephemeral nature of digital environments? How do we study mobile audiences whose localities constantly shift? Can we conduct ethnography in virtual spaces, when traditional ethnography values personal and material presence and engagement? How do we define and examine media production in an era of user-generated content? How can we critically explore processes of convergence at the highest levels of ownership while keeping individual agency in mind?

Second, media scholars must contend with processes of globalization linked to the interrelated developments of new forms of global capitalism and electronic media in the second half of the twentieth century² and more recently accelerated by the rise of digital communication. The time–space compression or distanciation (Castells, 1991, 2003; Giddens, 1991; Harvey, 1989) that results from the availability of instant global communication has, again, practical implications in terms of research methodologies. Once released into the complex network of informational flows that constitute our globalized media environment (Castells, 2004), media products and their reception become increasingly disconnected from their original site of production. Effectively accounting for this “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” of cultural forms (Appadurai, 1996; García Canclini, 1995; Tomlinson, 1999) poses a number of challenges for media studies scholars.

How do we access audiences that are more and more geographically and culturally spread? How do we study media production that takes place in complex and decentralized transnational networks? How do we make sense of the “complicated and connected repertoire of print, celluloid, electronic screens and billboards” through which audiences “construct imagined worlds that are chimerical, aesthetic, even fantastic objects” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 35)? How do we study the local in relationship to global processes that fundamentally transform “the places we inhabit and our cultural practices, experiences, and identities” (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 106)?

This volume will demonstrate that, in order to answer these questions sensitively, researchers – regardless of what they are studying and where they are geographically located – must develop a more sophisticated understanding of processes of transnational and/or transcultural influence and broaden the scope of their inquiries. We have to realize that we cannot simply assume that a method for studying audiences in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada will be useful in a transcultural context. We must understand that in the twenty-first century we are all “global media scholars” – not just those of us whose studies happen to focus on “foreign” locales. We must, finally, pay particular attention to the potential impact of our own experience of locality on the research we produce.

Third, the rise of digital technologies raises new practical and ethical questions for media scholars to wrestle with. If new modes of data collection and aggregation offer countless unexplored opportunities, they also create new problems. As Splichal and Dahlgren note, “Before the advent of computer-mediated communication, the ‘data at hand’ were always generated independently of communication processes under study . . . In digital communication, however, the data sets existing prior to our study consist of ‘footprints’ of personal information participants leave online while communicating.” How we choose to use this “surplus information” generated by individuals' online activity requires careful ethical and methodological consideration. How do we judge the quality of data we did not collect ourselves? Is it ethical to use data collected without media users' knowledge? How might the “unprecedented abundance of self-generated data” (Splichal and Dahlgren) affect what, where, and who gets studied and, perhaps more importantly, what, where, and who does not get studied? How do we handle privacy issues in virtual contexts that may be public from a legal point of view but perceived as private by users? How do we even know to whom we are talking?

Finally, and in addition to the constant transformation of our contemporary media-rich environment, media studies scholars have had to contend with an equally fundamental shift in the theoretical context(s) informing media and communication inquiry. The growing influence of poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques in the latter half of the twentieth century introduced important new questions regarding the nature of reality and the politics of representation for media scholars to ponder. The recognition that all texts are, at least to some extent, polysemic (Hall, 1997), required media scholars to develop more nuanced interpretations and approaches to media research. The parallel “crisis of representation” in anthropology raised questions as to whether studying the Other – which, in the case of media scholars, typically took the form of considering various dimensions of previously ignored media audiences or producers – was desirable, or so inextricably caught in power relations that it should be abandoned altogether (Clifford, 1986; Marcus, 1998; Wolf, 1992). This intellectual history as it informs methods will be discussed in greater detail in several of the chapters included in this volume.

Suffice it to say here that while these theoretical reflections may have had a more direct impact on some methodologies (e.g., ethnography) than others, few (if any) areas of media studies were left completely unaffected by this “ferment in the field” (Nordenstreng, 2004). From a methodological point of view, the expansion and diversification of the field of media studies – which, according to Nordenstreng has, in the past 50 years or so, “expanded perhaps more than any other academic field apart from computer science and biomedicine” (2004, p. 8) – has resulted in a continuing breakdown of disciplinary and methodological boundaries. While the study of media was always, at least to some extent, interdisciplinary in nature, it is becoming increasingly clear that the media-rich environment in which we live today is just too complex for one paradigm or one method to completely and definitively explore “all of it.”

Thus, as the varied chapters included in this volume collectively tackle many of the questions – both practical and ethical – outlined above, they also remain deeply attentive to the need to carefully contextualize our analyses. They demonstrate a keen awareness of the fact that, regardless of the method employed, researchers are typically able to provide but one piece of a larger methodological and theoretical puzzle.

As noted, “old” distinctions between methods have been fading for some time. Email interviews may have as much in common with surveys as they do with their face-to-face counterparts. A textual analysis of an ongoing blog takes on some of the dynamics of participant observation. A study of the process of sharing YouTube videos might combine elements of visual analysis, research on production, and digital ethnography. These challenges, of course, also open up some interesting opportunities. The online fan response to a television show may, for instance, prove useful in contextualizing a discourse or content analysis of the program.

Thus, just as journalists and media producers can no longer afford to work in only one medium, media studies researchers must become familiar with an increasingly wide array of methods if they are to effectively negotiate our constantly transforming media and scholarly environments. As Elisenda Ardevol and Edgar Gomez-Cruz note in their chapter on digital ethnography, “As image, sound, and movement are becoming more and more common features of social interaction . . . the digital ethnographer has to move between different research contexts and methods. With this development, the division between online and offline ethnographies tends to collapse even more and digital ethnography must be conveyed as a mediated practice, as a remix of methods that has to be engaged with the researcher's experience” (emphasis added). While their comment here focuses on ethnographic work, it accurately describes a process that takes place with other methods as well.

Finally, the evolving character of (multi)media environments means that we may simply have to invent new ways to explore and study the media. As Gates notes, “As a set of social and technological processes, the proliferation of networked digital media is related in complicated ways to changes in forms of social organization, communication, human identity, and subjectivity, and media studies needs to find ways of making sense of how this is happening and what it means” (2013, p. 8, emphasis added). Several of the chapters in this volume move in that direction by offering possible new additions to the media scholar's tool kit. These range from musical analysis (Amparo Porta) to eye tracking (Stephanie Geise) or photovoice (David Novak and Tonny Krijnen) techniques. Others propose to combine “older” methods with newer ones as a means to better explore the evolving dynamics that characterize individuals' engagement with media texts and contexts. Such efforts are illustrated, for instance, in Carolyn Michelle and Charles Davis's chapter on Q methodology or in Lillian Spina-Caza's work on perceptions of the creative self in virtual and physical activity.

Running Themes and Volume Organization

The variety of methodological approaches and theoretical inspirations represented in the chapters included in this volume powerfully illustrates the diverse and expanding nature of the field of media studies. A number of important recurring themes, however, run throughout the volume across the diversity of theoretical orientations and methodological tools discussed.

First of all, the chapters demonstrate a steady concern with ethical issues and power relations in academic work. As might be expected in this kind of volume, these concerns are the ostensible main topic of some of the chapters. The two introductory essays – Slavko Splichal and Peter Dahlgren's chapter on the historical evolution of research paradigms in media studies and Kevin Healey's reflection on the ethics of media studies research – address these questions most directly. What is unique, however, about this volume is that issues of power and ethics are discussed throughout the book.

Taken as a whole, the chapters persuasively illustrate the need to interrogate power relations both in the social environment in which media are produced, distributed, and consumed and in the process of conducting academic research. They share a commitment to identifying media studies' “blind spots,” particularly as they relate to the experiences and voices of groups and populations that have historically suffered from marginalization and invisibility in academic work and society at large – in her essay on autoethnography, Johanna Uotinen speaks of the small agency that is hidden from view in spaces that are considered “private” yet are infused with power relations. Thus, concerns over issues of gender, race, class, and/or ethnicity run throughout the book, raised by authors discussing methodologies as diverse as (oral) history (Mike Conway, Richard Popp, Mark Hampton), textual analysis (Sara McKinnon, Elfriede Fürsich), field experiments (Lillian Spina-Caza), interviews (Lorena Frankenberg and José Carlos Lozano, Sue Robinson), or ethnography (Tanja Bosch).

Collectively, the chapters recognize that discourse is never innocent, or, as Elfriede Fürsich puts it, that “meaning is created in all forms of popular culture and there is no banal entertainment that people only use to escape the mundane.” This, of course, applies to academic discourse as well. Thus, the chapters also provide ample reflection on “the epistemological relationship between the researcher and the materials” (Fürsich) to be studied, and the power relationships inherent in all forms of research whenever human beings are involved, regardless of the chosen method of inquiry – as Sue Robinson notes in her essay on interviewing, “the understanding of those power dynamics must be incorporated into the context of the answers, but also into the very approach of the interview and the protocol.” This recognition of the power of discourse further translates into a keen awareness of the need to carefully locate research within the specific historical, cultural, and social context from which it is conducted. The need to keep in mind, as Kevin Healey puts it, that “the theoretical and philosophical frameworks that inform one's work should not be taken for granted as settled matters but as contested sites requiring self-reflection and continued engagement with a diverse community of scholars.”

From a practical point of view, the transformation of our media landscape produces some interesting challenges for the editor of a volume on research methods. The wide variety of methods being constantly developed to explore ever changing dynamics, many of which we are just beginning to understand, means that some choices had to be made and that some things were necessarily excluded. A number of scholars have warned against the tendency to dismiss “old” theories, methods, and insights in the face of rapid technological change as if new technologies did not share a historical link with earlier media forms and automatically rendered previous insights or methodologies obsolete (see, for example, Livingstone, 2004; Morley, 2006; Sterne, 2007). Keeping this warning in mind, some of the chapters in this volume focus on the methods most “traditionally” associated with media studies – surveys, experiments, interviews, content/textual analysis. The hope is that these essays will serve as a good starting point to researchers new to the method and as a useful “refresher” to more advanced scholars. The goal is also to make a convincing case for these methods' continuing usefulness.

In the previous volume of this encyclopedia, Gates raised the question of “How useful are the concepts, theories, and methodologies developed in the days before the rise of the Internet and digital media for understanding the new media landscape? (2013, p. 8). This volume will demonstrate that while some methods may require adaptation and while new tools may be needed to address some dimensions of our contemporary media environment, there is danger in throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. I strongly agree with Gates that rather than uncritically “celebrating recent innovations as radically different and inherently better” we must strive “to recognize the deeply embedded ways that the past is still with us in the present” (p. 7). The chapters in this book all demonstrate a commitment to doing so.

The volume does, however, spend much time reflecting on how research methods in media studies are evolving in order to “accommodate the challenges of this new research environment without compromising academic rigour” (Arnason, 2011, p. 98). Bringing together established scholars of national and international reputation and emerging researchers, many of the chapters in this book provide examples of how “old” methods must (and can) be adapted to better capture the complexity of new forms of communication and media production, distribution, and/or reception. They also provide exhaustive, and often brazenly honest, reflections on the challenges researchers might encounter along the way. Other essays demonstrate how our contemporary media context can be approached in new and innovative ways through research methods that simply were not available or practical in earlier times. This means that some of the methodologies discussed here are still in the early exploratory stages and may need further development, and perhaps modification, in the future.

The collation of scholars and/or research foci from different parts of the world – Argentina, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden (without counting my own identity as a French citizen/Japan specialist) – is another distinguishing feature of the volume, despite the remaining limitations imposed by the use of the English language for its text and by the politics of academic publishing which tend to privilege individuals with some connection to powerful “Western” institutions (myself included). While such diversity might be naturally expected of a volume included in the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, few of the currently available texts focusing on research methods in media and/or communication reach far beyond the limited and familiar confines of US and British academic institutions – except, perhaps, in a separate section ostensibly focused on the study of “global” media. This volume's relative geographic diversity – even if admittedly incomplete – thus constitutes an important contribution to the discussion of research methods as it broadens the scope of inquiry by providing insights into transcultural dynamics as well as the process of scholarly production in other parts of the world.

In an effort to provide both more general conceptual information about research methods and more specific examples of their application, this book consists of a mix of “how to” essays and specific case studies that draw from research projects employing a variety of methods. The case studies propose to take the reader “behind the curtain” of the research to point to the decisions made along the way, to the challenges encountered in the research process, and to allow for a more contextualized reflection on the results. These case studies, thus, are not necessarily provided as “perfect” examples of how to do research – in fact, several authors discuss aspects of the research that have “gone wrong” as examples of what not to do and I believe all would agree that very few research projects ever turn out exactly as expected. They are, rather, offered as useful food for thought for scholars in the process of developing their own research projects.

This book is divided into four sections loosely organized around the themes of theoretical and ethical considerations in media studies research, conducting research with people, conducting research with texts, and the challenges of virtual environments and mixed method research. That some of the chapters could have been included in more than one section of the volume illustrates the extent to which the boundaries between different types of methods and modes of inquiry are being challenged and eroded in our current historical moment. Furthermore, as noted above, as the concept of “a text” is constantly evolving, most research projects could, in some respects, be argued to fit into Part 2. The divisions are thus admittedly artificial and intended to reflect the broader lines underlying each group of methodologies rather than to erect impervious boundaries. We construct categories in order to facilitate the process of analysis. Yet we are cognizant that we are assigning order and structure to a field that is both holistic and interconnected.

Part 1: Setting Up the Stage

“Setting Up the Stage” provides the historical and theoretical context necessary to a thorough engagement with the nature of research methods in media studies, their evolution over time and in different environments, and their ethical implications. Slavko Splichal and Peter Dahlgren begin the conversation with a historically contextualized examination of the terrain of media and communication research and its prevailing paradigms. Characterizing the intellectual history of the field of media studies as “somewhat ambiguous,” they sketch an outline of the evolution of its “loose organizing logics.” In conclusion, the authors make a case for a “reconstituted matrix of research” organized around four types of knowledge – professional, administrative, policy, and critical – as a way to think about the field of media studies that both identifies and legitimizes more varied forms of knowledge production. Kevin Healey follows with a critical examination of the underlying values and ideologies that guide media research projects and the institutional bureaucracies that govern them. Highlighting, in particular, how basic ethical concepts are complicated by the emergence of new media technologies, he also provides a more pragmatic examination of the ethical challenges that frequently arise in media studies research and some guidance on how scholars might prepare to face them.

Part 2: Working with People

“Working with People” focuses on the process of conducting research with people using a variety of methods. The section begins with discussions of methods that broadly involve asking individuals to answer questions. Suman Mishra starts with an overview of survey methodology, its historical background, and its uses in communication and media studies. In addition to reminding readers of the basics of sampling procedures, questionnaire design, questionnaire distribution, and data analysis, the chapter addresses the challenges of conducting survey research transnationally as well as discussing ethical issues specific to the method. Carolyn Michelle and Charles Davis then bridge the gap between surveys and more qualitative means of studying audiences by introducing readers to Q methodology, a methodological hybrid drawing from the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative traditions as a tool to explore individuals' engagement with a wide variety of media texts. They take readers behind the scenes of a study using the method to explore cross-national responses to James Cameron's 2009 feature film Avatar.

The next three chapters focus on the method of interviewing in its multiple forms. Sue Robinson sets up the stage here with an overview of interviewing as a process of qualitative inquiry, pointing in particular to the need to develop a critical awareness of the power relations inherent in the method. Mike Conway focuses more closely on challenges specific to oral history interviews as a method that demands “a personal interaction with the subject, and a realization that the interview is a collaborative process involving both the interviewer and interviewee.” Lorena Frankenberg and José Carlos Lozano illustrate the difficulties and rewards of both interviewing as a technique and oral history as a practice in their chapter on memories of moviegoing in Monterrey, Mexico. Describing interviewing informants about their past as a process of meaning negotiation, they point to the “rich and dense insight on the lasting meanings and values attached to participants' media consumption habits” the method can provide. The authors also note the importance of resisting the temptation to construct nostalgic accounts of individuals' past and the need to pay close attention to the ways in which class dynamics shape media consumers' experiences.

Building on these insights about interviewing and its challenges, the next two chapters more broadly address (auto)ethnographic methods. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a local radio station in South Africa, Tanja Bosch critically examines the process of studying media production as an “insider” attempting to conduct theoretically informed reflexive research in her own “backyard.” She considers how her identity as a black female manager in the station affected her relationship with informants and, ultimately, the outcome of her research. Her chapter illustrates the complexity of negotiating multiple identities in a context in which feelings of betrayal and loss of control often abound. In her autoethnographic study of the introduction of digital television in Finland, Johanna Uotinen illustrates how the method can be employed to address some of the tensions arising in the informant–researcher relationship as described by Bosch and more generally generated by the “crisis of representation” in ethnography. She proposes the concept of “small agency” as a means to examine practices connected to media that are often so routinized and privatized that they have become invisible. She strongly contends, however, that in order to be effective as a research method, autoethnography cannot “merely describe the private” but must also seek to produce “connections to the general, social, and cultural.”

The final two chapters in this section discuss experimental approaches to research. Glenn Leshner lays out the basics of what he deems a relatively underused method in media studies, particularly when compared to content analysis or surveys. In addition to describing the particulars of conducting controlled experiments, the chapter addresses some common misconceptions and controversies surrounding the method. It also emphasizes the need to link the research process to a clear theoretical framework. The section closes with a closer examination of one type of experimental design: between-subjects experiments. Here, Kim Bissell uses two case studies – an examination of anti-fat bias in grade school children and a similar study involving adults – to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the method. Bissell concludes that experimental design, as the primary tool for studying and understanding causal relationships, remains one of the most important methods in empirical research in mass communication and media studies today.

Part 3: Working with Texts

While most media studies research could arguably be viewed as dealing with texts at least in some respects – interview transcripts, for instance, are texts that the researcher analyses – “Working with Texts” considers methods in which a wide variety of broadly defined texts are the central element of analysis. First, Rico Neumann and Kevin Coe make a case for the utility of a mixed approach to content analysis blending computer-assisted content analysis with manual coding techniques to analyze quantitative trends in large amounts of text. They illustrate how the method was applied in an examination of apologetic rhetoric in modern presidential speeches. Along the way, they address issues of sampling – of identifying key terms and their linguistic derivatives for computer-assisted searching – and consider challenges in data collection and analysis. Matthew Lombard follows with a discussion of the “lessons learned from a research saga” involving a large-scale quantitative content analysis of the structural features of television conducted in the mid-1990s – a project so ambitious that by the time it was ready for publication, the data were deemed obsolete by reviewers. The chapter also reflects on the original project's unexpected afterlife and on the joys and rewards of conducting research despite the challenges and frequent disappointments.

Approaching texts from a more qualitative perspective, Sara McKinnon outlines the different approaches deployed by researchers working with texts and offers a step-by-step overview of the process of conducting text-based qualitative research. She emphasizes, in particular, the need to carefully contextualize texts within the broader social, political, and cultural contexts in which they circulate and the importance of researcher reflexivity in qualitative work. Employing a critical textual analysis of newspaper food reviews of ethnic restaurants as an example, Elfriede Fürsich further explores the theoretical underpinnings of the method and illustrates how it can be used to explore the ideological dimensions of cultural discourse constructed beyond the manifest content of the text.

The increasingly prominent position of text-based historical methods in media studies is explored in the next two chapters. In his broad introductory essay, Richard Popp traces the evolution of historical methods in media studies in the wake of the cultural turn that reshaped academic study in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Locating the work of media historians in relationship to historiographic debates in the fields of history, American studies, and historical sociology, the chapter considers the primary ways in which culture has been defined and treated as an area of historical inquiry in the past few decades. It closes with an examination of three historiographic approaches that may be particularly useful to media scholars – the culture industry revisited, the history of the senses, and the history of the book. Mark Hampton then complements Popp's more theoretical approach with a detailed discussion of a range of inquiries and approaches in media history, and of the types of empirical sources media historians have at their disposition to investigate these questions.

This section closes with three chapters focused on the study of visual texts. James Walters first provides an inquiry into film analysis through a series of key texts widely used in introductory classes on the method, which he describes and carefully evaluates. Noting that “the pursuit of one defining methodology seems futile,” he advocates a continuing engagement with multiple approaches, keeping in mind both the merits and limitations of each position. Stephanie Geise discusses the productive potential of combining eye-tracking technology that allows for the empirical study of processes of visual perception and information processing with other empirical methods in media studies research, where the technique is still in an emerging state. She offers her own study of shock-inducing advertisements as an example of how the method can be applied to the study of visual texts. Finally, David Novak and Tonny Krijnen's chapter on the use of photovoice – a qualitative methodology in which participants use photographs in tandem with in-depth interviews – outlines the benefits of “studying visual media with visual methods” and provides an additional tool for media study scholars, particularly in their analyses of visual media reception.

Part 4: Virtual Challenges, Interdisciplinary Research, and Mixed Method Research

The five chapters in “Virtual Challenges, Interdisciplinary Research, and Mixed Method Research” are more loosely connected along the themes of studying virtual worlds, interdisciplinary and multimethod research. While many draw from the methods discussed so far in the book, they deserve a separate treatment in that they engage more directly with and reflect upon the changing nature of media texts and contexts – in particular the changes occasioned by the development of digital and global media – and/or provide powerful examples of how these methods can be productively combined. In other words, they collectively answer the call to address the challenges specific to virtual environments more assertively and to develop new interdisciplinary methodologies and theoretical approaches that harness the potential of virtual worlds as research venues more effectively (Arnason, 2011, p. 108).

While drawing from very different methodological and theoretical contexts, Helle Sjøvaag and Eirik Stavelin's chapter on online news analysis and Elisenda Ardevol and Edgar Gomez-Cruz's reflection on digital ethnography and media practice both wrestle with the dynamics of conducting research in ephemeral virtual environments. Sjøvaag and Stavelin suggest that methods of content analysis must be redesigned to account for the medium-specific features of Internet distribution. They propose a new approach to analyzing online news based on a combination of human and computer coding and on the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative measures. The authors illustrate how this approach might work through a discussion of a content analysis of online news output collected from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). They also discuss the difficulties they encountered in their efforts to develop an approach that more effectively accounted for the ever-changing nature of digital information. Ardevol and Gomez-Cruz reflect on the opportunities and challenges created by the rise of virtual environments for the practice of ethnography. They note, in particular, how the increased importance of virtual interactions in individuals' daily lives destabilizes the notion of “the ethnographic field linked to a place-focused concept of culture.” They argue for a reformulation of the concept of fieldwork to include multiple activities and sites in different locations and devices in order to develop “a technologically enhanced but always embodied ethnographic practice.”

Lillian Spina-Caza's chapter, comparing children's engagement in similar virtual and physical activities, provides a specific example of how research methods must be creatively adjusted and combined to adapt to the multifaceted nature of virtual environments and digital technology. The chapter describes three studies building on each other and employing a wide range of methods – including content analysis, qualitative interviews, observational and cooperative inquiry techniques, and a large-scale field experiment – aimed at developing a better understanding of individuals' perceptions of creative agency in both physical and virtual contexts. Spina-Caza's work powerfully illustrates the productive potential of combining multiple methods and interdisciplinary perspectives and the need to remain attuned to power dynamics in research – she identifies gender as a key dimension of individuals' experience of virtual activity.

The volume concludes with two chapters providing additional examples of interdisciplinary research, both conducted over relatively longer periods of time and employing multiple methods in varied contexts. Amparo Porta reports on her largescale analysis of the sound environments of popular programs targeted at children in both film and television. Drawing on a semiotics approach, the chapter outlines several exploratory paths, aimed at analyzing both the content and the structure of the music, and describes the methodological instruments the author developed in order to explore the various dimensions of sound tracks. Finally, Jéssica Retis's work on interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the relationship between media and Latino diasporic identities returns to many of the main themes running throughout the volume. Particularly noteworthy is her tackling of issues of race and class in a global context, and of the role digital technology plays in transforming “Territorial immigrants . . . into digital immigrants in a complex and changing process affecting both Latin Americans living abroad and their family and friends who remain in their place of origin.” From a methodological point of view, Retis's chapter illustrates how a researcher's long-term intellectual engagement with a broad set of research question can lead her to multiple empirical approaches and even to multiple locales – her research takes her from Madrid to Los Angeles, New York, and London. It reminds us that identities are often built in imaginary rather than physical spaces and of the importance of the media in constructing, defining, sharing, and unraveling these identities in everyday life.

To conclude, the chapters included in this volume provide resounding evidence of the dynamic and innovative character of research methods in media studies and, more broadly, of the forward-looking and interdisciplinary nature of the field. As new communication technologies are reshaping the ways in which the media operate and enter individuals' daily routines, media studies scholars are embracing the challenge of figuring out how best to address the implications of the fact that “we no longer live with media, but in media” (Deuze, 2011, p. 137). They/we are finding that new tools are sometimes needed, while other long-established ones might require modification. They/we are learning to combine methods of inquiry in new and imaginative ways. This volume demonstrates that the history of interdisciplinarity in a field which has long, as Richard Popp puts it in Chapter 16, “borrowed liberally from fields across academia, pocketing a useful theory here or a helpful methodology there,” has rendered media scholars particularly adaptable. They/we are, consequently, particularly well equipped to confront the challenges of our fast evolving twenty-first-century sociocultural environments.

This ability to adapt, however, does not signify a complete break from the past or from questions that have long been of concern to scholars studying the media. In a context in which we are witnessing a disturbing increase in (and tolerance for) surveillance technology and invasions of privacy, and at a time when processes of globalization are producing new forms of inequalities, it is crucial that media scholars remain focused on the core issues that have long proven central components of our field's intellectual contribution.

Thus, the most valuable contribution of this volume's chapters is arguably the way in which they collectively illustrate a continuing intellectual and empirical engagement with power dynamics – gender, race, class, ethnicity, global origin – even as the larger popular cultural landscape is permeated with more celebratory accounts of new technologies' emancipatory and democratizing potential. Perhaps more than ever, media studies scholars are committed to a critical, thorough, and carefully contextualized examination of our complex and evolving media-rich environment – an examination that is attuned to multiple and diverse dynamics and to the researcher's own position and bearing on the process of inquiry. Media studies theory continues to evolve in tandem with sharpened approaches to research methodology. This, I believe, warrants much optimism for the future of research methods in media studies.

NOTES

1 Media scholars remind us that all media is social media. Used to refer to some contemporary forms of digital media, “social media” is therefore rather a misnomer.

2 Scholars disagree on the question of when globalization “started” and whether or not it represents a complete break. They do generally agree, however, that there is “something new” about contemporary processes of global exchange when compared to earlier eras (Jones, 2010).

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