Digital Research in Mass Communication

MC7019: Week 12 Blog

Credit: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/TCMAKE_PHOTO

As we've talked about in our class this whole semester, digital media constantly changes and emerges. Digital is so much more than 0's and 1's - it's how we search for information, connect with our friends, work, attend school, build social relationships that transcend space and even get through a global pandemic. Mass communication researchers continually find digital media more relevant and necessary to understand the world we live in, and they creatively find new methods to conduct digital research.

Because digital media continually changes, how can researchers conduct research that actually captures what they wish to discover? There are so many data points to capture that, for example, looking at one hashtag on Twitter surrounding the Super Bowl just scratches the surface of how people are using digital media to talk about the game. Ideally one could see how texts, Snapchats, phone calls, tweets, Facebook posts, in-person conversations, etc. play into how an individual talked about the game with his or her friends and family, but not even the largest grant could fully capture the experience without limitations. Plus, there is just so much data that researchers have to stop somewhere. Scholars seek rich and contextualized material, but digital media presents countless layers of experience, behaviors, variables and metadata that make it difficult to understand it all with more traditional research methods. That's why researchers adapt traditional research methods to fit with digital needs, such as content analyses, digital ethnographies and online interviews. Tools that we've learned to use including Brandwatch and Gephi are just some ways we're expanding our methods.

In addition to all these changes, Markham (2020) points out that ethics need to be considered in all this digital research. It's very easy to get caught up in the aggregation of users and the very new and exciting ways of research (e.g., eye-tracking, time spent on site, etc.) that we forget we are still conducting research on people. Furthermore, we've talked about how technology does not have ethics. The people who make new technologies and conduct the research inherently input their biases in them. Gerd Leonhard does an excellent job explaining the issues of digital ethics in his TED Talk back in 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZn0IfOb61U

This point is important to talk about when discussing the future of digital research, especially in the mass communication and other social science fields.

But what does the future of mass communication research look like? My guess is that a it's going to all become digital research. Technology will only continue to advance, not regress. Because of this, we must continue to develop creative ways of conducting research that accurately capture human behavior, message dissemination, media influences and more without getting too overwhelmed with data. There are so many possibilities for research that this is an exciting time for scholars! Let's actively encourage one another to try out new things and learn more about how technology plays an increasingly vital role in our lives.