Blending theory with hands-on practice, this text is an accessible, theoretically grounded, and methodologically rich guide to using LLMs in communication inquiry. The book is organized around three core themes: methodological applications, human-AI collaboration, and critical reflection. It shows readers how tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and BERT can be used to analyze large volumes of text, images, and digital media content. It covers sentiment analysis, framing analysis, topic discovery, text classification, network analysis, synthetic surveys and experiments, and multimodal research. Step-by-step Python examples, real-world case studies, and practical workflows help readers apply these methods to questions involving social media, public opinion, misinformation, digital advocacy, and online communities. A key contribution of the book is its focus on responsible AI use, addressing major concerns surrounding bias, transparency, ethics, and reliability while helping readers understand when AI should enhance—rather than replace—human judgment. Timely, accessible, and forward-looking, this book offers a roadmap for conducting communication research in the age of AI. This text is designed for students, researchers, and practitioners within communication studies, public relations, journalism, and related social sciences fields. Online materials include code and example datasets. Please visit www.routledge.com/9781041156901.
