A thirty-year retrospective of the Journal of Media Economics: who wrote what, and how?

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a content analysis of the published articles in the Journal of Media Economics during the period 1988–2017 and was sparked by the 30th anniversary of the journal. A total of 388 papers were content-analyzed to answer the questions of who wrote what, and how in the journal for the above-mentioned 30 years. Each article was classified based on the number of authors, author’s affiliation (country, region, and educational background), target country and industry analyzed, unit of analysis, theoretical base, methodological approach, data collection method, and time frame of research. The results revealed drastic changes in the composition of authors’ affiliated countries and their educational background. The target country and industry of research, and the level of analysis also changed. On the other hand, theoretical basis and methodological approaches, including data collection methods, did not show much change over time, except for the increase in mathematical modeling papers. The editorship changed from one person trained in journalism school (1988–2005) to co-editors – a communications scholar and an economist (2006–2017) – and the comparison between the two different types of the editorship showed an apparent difference in who wrote what, and how.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaemin Jung

Jaemin Jung  (Ph.D) is professor in the Graduate School of Information and Media Management at the KAIST, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include IT/media users’ behaviors, robot/AI Journalism, and managerial and economic issues in the media industry. [email protected]

Youngju Kim

Youngju Kim (Ph.D) is a research fellow at the Korea Press Foundation. Her research interests include change of media users’ behaviors and business strategies of media companies in the smart media ecosystem. She also has been studying media policy. [email protected]

Haeyeop Song

Haeyeop Song (Ph.D)* is assistant professor in the Department of Media & Culture at Kunsan National University in Korea. He is analyzing ICT users’ attitudes and behaviors with diverse methodological approaches. [email protected]