Communication Research About the Internet: a Thematic Meta-analysis

Abstract

This study presents a theoretical and methodological review of communication research about the internet. Through a thematic meta-analysis of recent research publications about the internet, we identified topical, methodological and theoretical trends of current internet studies. The patterns of the internet research agenda are discussed in relation to a development model of communication research. We hope the findings of this study provide not only an overview of current internet research trends but also new insights for future research directions regarding this new medium.

The (Re)Shaping of the Israeli Sport Media: The Case of Talk-Back

“…In the past 2 decades, Internet-related research has been moving from early descriptive studies about the medium itself-the Internet's characteristics-to a higher level, focusing on Web users and social effects (Kim & Weaver, 2002). At the same time, however, the mix of various media characteristics made Internet content analysis fairly complex.…”

A Preliminary Inquiry into the Methodologies Employed in Research on ICTs and Society: Prologue (“An Alternate View of Knowledge Negotiation”)

“…Kim and Weaver find that only 17% of the 561 were "explicitly about theory" (p. 529) (see Table 4 in Kim & Weaver,p. 530 Kim and Weaver (2002) article? This special issue of 13 contributions is dominated by scholars located in communication studies departments, with two exceptions in sociology, one in a business school, and one in language and literature.…”

“…But also because they point us in the direction of how a study of the methodologies employed in research on ICTs and society might be investigated. These references, an issue of the journal The Information Society 1 (2005) devoted to whether research on the Internet (aka "Internet studies") might be considered a discipline and the Kim and Weaver (2002) article that reviews communication research about the Internet, suggest strategies for an examination of the methodologies employed in to make progress on the topic. Then, I want to describe what I am calling a "prologue" to the commitment I made, which is an alternate way of examining how we understand the work of scholars who carry out research on ICTs and society, which supports Gunilla Bradley's conception of "convergence theory" as a guide to understanding how to approach the topic of "methodologies employed in research on ICTs and society."…”

Online Methodology: Analysing News Flows of Online Journalism

“…However, there are a number of problems and challenges, not just to CDA scholars, but to the media research community in general, which must be dealt with if we want to adapt this approach to perform a critical analysis of online news texts. Tae Kim & Weaver (2002) note that despite the Internet revolution, media researchers still predominantly focus on one specific communication medium, the print media. The empirical data might be collected from electronic databases, but as such it still represents the print versions of newspaper texts, seen as 'the only thing available'.…”