mediarecherche

Mediarecherche is a term used to describe systematic inquiry into media systems, content, audiences, and effects, intended to support journalism, communication practice, and policy making. It encompasses media studies, market research, and data analytics to examine how media are produced, distributed, consumed, and financed.

Core areas include audience measurement and usage analysis, content analysis and media bias, media economics and ownership, media technology and platform studies, and policy and regulation.

Methods include qualitative and quantitative approaches: surveys, interviews, focus groups, ethnography, content analysis, and computational methods such as sentiment analysis, social media analytics, and big data analytics.

Data sources include audience measurement services (rating points), circulation data, digital analytics from websites and apps, streaming and platform metrics, and social media data.

Applications of mediarecherche cover journalism, advertising, regulators, and researchers; it informs editorial strategy, media planning, regulatory impact assessment, and public communication.

History and trends: the field emerged from social science and market research and has evolved with the digital era, enabling cross-platform measurement while raising privacy concerns and prompting data protection considerations and open data initiatives.

Challenges include data quality and comparability, fragmentation across platforms, privacy and ethical issues, and ongoing methodological debates about measurement validity and terminology.

See also: audience measurement, media studies, content analysis.