Diversity of Methodological Approaches in Social Sciences Example of the Analysis of Media and Online Information

As with many rapidly evolving areas, research on pluralism in media and information makes use of appropriate interdisciplinary approaches that consider diverse and interdependent factors. These considerations include new economic constraints, journalistic production, networked technologies, online social interactions, new forms of discourse, consumer preferences and practices, and the specificities of information markets.

This book presents and assesses several methodological approaches that have proven to be valuable in the study of transformations in media and information. Some are well-known in social sciences (e.g. qualitative analysis by interviews), whereas others come from different disciplines and remain rare and original (e.g. agent-based modeling).

By focusing on various dimensions of the media and information pluralism, this book pulls together methods based on network analysis, agent-based modeling and sociosemiotics, as well as qualitative and legal approaches. Each of the five chapters introduces a specific method and its relevance for the analysis of a particular research question.

Inna Lyubareva is Associate Professor of economics at IMT Atlantique and a member of the LEGO research laboratory in France. Her research interests focus on the role of data-driven technologies in creative industries and media. She develops original approaches using quantitative and qualitative methods at the interface between social science, statistics and computer science.

Roger Waldeck is Associate Professor of computational social sciences at IMT Atlantique and a member of the LEGO research laboratory in France. His research interests focus on methodologies for modeling and managing complex social systems, including the use of agent-based modeling as well as serious games for complex decision making. His latest research focuses on organizational resilience.