The rise of new technologies and platforms, such as mobile devices and streaming services, has substantially changed the media entertainment landscape and continues to do so. Since its subject of study is changing constantly and rapidly, research on media entertainment has to be quick to adapt. This need to quickly react and adapt not only relates to the questions researchers need to ask but also to the methods they need to employ to answer those questions. Over the last few years, the field of computational social science has been developing and using methods for the collection and analysis of data that can be used to study the use, content, and effects of entertainment media. These methods provide ample opportunities for this area of research and can help in overcoming some of the limitations of self-report data and manual content analyses that most of the research on media entertainment is based on. However, they also have their own set of challenges that researchers need to be aware of and address to make (full) use of them. This thematic issue brings together studies employing computational methods to investigate different types and facets of media entertainment. These studies cover a wide range of entertainment media, data types, and analysis methods, and clearly highlight the potential of computational approaches to media entertainment research. At the same time, the articles also include a critical perspective, openly discuss the challenges and limitations of computational methods, and provide useful suggestions for moving this nascent field forward.

中文翻译：

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新格式，新方法：计算方法作为媒体娱乐研究的前进方向

诸如移动设备和流服务之类的新技术和平台的兴起已极大地改变了媒体娱乐领域，并将继续如此。由于其研究主题在不断变化，因此对媒体娱乐的研究必须迅速适应。快速反应和适应的需求不仅与研究人员需要提出的问题有关，而且还与他们用来回答这些问题的方法有关。在过去的几年中，计算社会科学领域一直在发展和使用用于收集和分析数据的方法，这些方法可用于研究娱乐媒体的用途，内容和效果。这些方法为该领域的研究提供了充足的机会，可以帮助克服大多数媒体娱乐研究所基于的自我报告数据和手动内容分析的某些局限性。但是，它们也有自己的一系列挑战，研究人员需要意识到并解决这些挑战，以充分利用它们。这个主题问题汇集了采用计算方法来研究媒体娱乐的不同类型和方面的研究。这些研究涵盖了广泛的娱乐媒体，数据类型和分析方法，并清楚地强调了计算方法在媒体娱乐研究中的潜力。同时，文章还包含了批判性观点，公开讨论了计算方法的挑战和局限性，