Rewriting How Communication Researchers Work, New Special Issue

A new special issue of the journal Communication and Change takes aim at how generative AI is reshaping communication research—both what scholars study and how they study it. Introduced in an editorial by Lei Guo, James E. Katz, Baohua Zhou and Jianhua Yao, the collection titled “The AI revolution in communication research: methods, measurements, and challenges” includes an overview article and four companion papers covering content analysis, survey research, experiments and agent-based methods. The editors say AI is changing the discipline’s methodological toolkit while raising concerns about what may be lost in the process. They highlight two challenges: expanding research capacity amid a digital divide, and defining boundaries for responsible AI use as journals and bodies like the International Communication Association develop guidelines.