An ecological approach to debated questions in communication research: issue competition, media convergence, and AI-generated content

Abstract Ecology is a scientific discipline focusing on interactions among living organisms and their environment. We advocate for applying ecological theory to communication research, using three notable debates for illustration: issue competition, media convergence, and AI-generated content (AIGC). For the first debate, we review how we developed and tested an ecology-informed framework to determine the competitive nature of the public issue agenda. For the second debate, we demonstrate parallel trends between media convergence and divergence through case studies of the Apple ecosystem and the Time-Warner-AOL merger. For the third debate, we formulate hypotheses about AIGC's ecosystem, creativity, emotional intelligence, and the replacement of human-generated content, drawing on mediamorphosis and other ecological principles. While complementing the existing theories and methods in communication research, the ecological approach sheds unique insights into long-standing puzzles and emerging unknowns.