Product Description

This title offers a comprehensive review of earlier research and a set of guidelines for how to think about, plan, and carry out studies of media and communications. An essential reference work for students and researchers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #396096 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'This Handbook takes on a full range of communication research approaches with intelligence, skill, and agility not found in methodology texts' - Vincent Mosco, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, USA

'Presents an excellent overview of and introduction to the concepts and elements within major quantitative and qualitative research processes.' - Marit Bakke, University of Bergen, Norway

'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 Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science

From the Back Cover
The Handbook of Media and Communications Research presents qualitative as well as quantitative approaches to the analysis and interpretation of media, covering perspectives from both the social sciences and the humanities. Taking methodology as a strategic level of analysis which joins practical concerns with theoretical issues, the Handbook offers a comprehensive review of earlier research and a set of guidelines for how to think about, plan, and carry out studies of media in different social and cultural contexts including computer-mediated communication. Divided into sections on the history, systematics and pragmatics of research, and written by internationally acknowledged specialists in each area, the Handbook will be a standard reference work for students and researchers in the field of media, communication and cultural studies.

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

Customer Reviews

Very good starting point
This is a very good book for anyone doing or starting research on any aspect of media. It provides information about the existing theories and approaches to media research, and is a great source of other books on the same subject.

A good reference book
This is one of the best reference books that I have come across regarding media studies. The density of information in it would, most likely, make it less apt as a text book adopted for a class, but I would recommend my students this book as THE reference book. It contains a wealth of information, analyses and cases clearly showing the pros and cons - as well as interplay - of quantitative and qualitative (media) studies. The authors are also (almost) consistently referring to the canon of media studies/mass communication studies. It is the perfect book to accompany a mass com/media class if the students are to do empirical projects.