Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech is Assistant Professor with Habilitation at Maria Curie-Sk¿odowska University in Lublin, Poland.

Bart¿omiej ¿ódzki is Assistant Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland.

Introduction; Part I: New Theoretical and Methodological Foundations; 1. Dilemmas and Uncertainty: Seven Research Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic; 2. The Uberisation of Higher Education: Datafied Dynamics in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic; 3. An Ecological Approach: The Infodemic, Pandemic, and COVID-19; 4. Research Project Reformulation: A Narrative on the Design and Methodological Changes Implemented During the Emergency; Part II: Changes in Media Outlets Activity and Practices; 5. Broadcasters' Strategy Case Studies: Modification of Product Offers as a Challenge in Times of Plague and Survival; 6. Natural Language Processing and Statistic: The First Six Months of the COVID-19 Infodemic in Croatia; 7. News Shareability Analysis: Global Television Channels as Sources of Information During the Pandemic; Part III: Changes in Media Content and Narration; 8. Narrative Mode of Analysis: From Media Texts to Pandemic Memoryscape; 9. Diaries: The Lockdown Narratives of Individuals; 10. Media-Aesthetic Approach: A Global Visualization of the Pandemic; 11. Qualitative and Quantitative Social Media Content Analysis: TikTok Usage by the World Health Organisation During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic; 12. Mixed Analysis of User Activity, Content, and Networks: Twitter's Information Cascades on Conspiratorial Pandemics; Part IV: Changes in Media Usage and Reception; 13. Participative Research: The Case of Media Usage by Children Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic; 14. Diaries: Researching Lockdown Social Distancing in the Digital Age; 15. Search Trends Analysis: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Other Health Campaigns; 16. Sentiment Analysis, Topic Modelling and Social Network Analysis: COVID-19, Protest Movements, and the Polish Tweetosphere; Conclusions; 17. Various Dynamics of the COVID-19 World of Media and Communication Research

This truly interdisciplinary volume brings together a diverse group of scholars to explore changes in the significance of media and communication in the era of pandemic. The book answers two interrelated questions: how media and communication reality changed during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how media and communication were effectively studied during this time.
The book presents changes in media and communication in three areas: media production, media content, and media usage contexts. It then describes the theoretical and practical, methodological, technical, organizational, and ethical challenges in conducting research in circumstances of sudden change in research conditions, emergency situations and developing crises. Drawing on various theoretical studies and empirical research, the volume illustrates the principles and results of applying diverse research methods to the changing role of media in a pandemic and offers good practices and guidance to address the problems in implementing research projects in a time of sudden difficulties and challenges.
This diverse and interdisciplinary book will be of significance to scholars and researchers in media studies, communication studies, research methods, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.
Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003232049-5/ecological-approach-fausto-colombo?context=ubx&refId=aa5bc500-bb40-4ccb-879b-d5c8562efa67