Description
The new social contexts formed via the Internet, and the new forms of data made available by the increasing use of diverse forms of computer mediated communication, have challenged researchers to develop approaches which do them justice. At the same time, there has been concern that established principles should be preserved, and that the connection between virtual research methods and more conventional research approaches should not be rejected out of hand. Despite a number of handbooks and textbooks published in recent years there is still a dearth of authoritative works which offer comprehensive coverage of the virtual research methods available to social researchers. In particular, there is none which thoroughly explores the full range of virtual research methods and their antecedents, and which explores the methodological and epistemological ramifications of their development. This multivolume reference collection fills this gap.
The collection covers perspectives on the Internet as a social space; research models for the Internet and the skills, techniques and approaches needed to conduct research in a virtual environment; innovations in the research process and reflections on these innovations; and the ethical considerations to take into account when doing research on the Internet.
Table of Contents
VOLUME ONE
PART ONE: PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNET AS SOCIAL SPACE
Reducing Social Context Cues - Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler
Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication
The Emergence of Online Community - Nancy Baym
Virtual Communities as Communities - Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia
Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone
Constructing Identity Online - Kaveri Subrahmanyam and David Smahel
Identity Exploration and Self-Presentation
Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and MySpace - ZeynepTufekci
Privacy, Trust and Self-Disclosure - Adam Joinson et al
Globalization, Networking, Urbanization - Manuel Castells
Reflections on the Spatial Dynamics of the Information Age
Minding the Digital Gap - Eszter Hargittai
Why Understanding Digital Inequality
Fizz in the Field - Steve Jones
Toward a Basis for an Emergent Internet Studies
PART TWO: RESEARCH SITES AND RESEARCH MODELS FOR THE INTERNET
Conclusions - Daniel Miller and Don
Internet as Culture and Cultural Artefact - Christine Hine
From Culture to Connection - Allison Cavanagh
Internet Community Studies
A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds - Tom Boellstorff
Love at First Sight? Visual Images and Virtual Encounters with Bodies - Nicole Constable
The Field Site as a Network - Jenna Burrell
A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research
The Ethnography of New Media Worlds? Following the Case of Global Poker - John Farnsworth and Terry Austrin
Localizing the Internet beyond Communities and Networks - John Postill
Websites as Visual and Multimodal Cultural Expressions - Luc Pauwels
Opportunities and Issues of Online Hybrid Media Research
VOLUME TWO
PART ONE : SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 1: MODES OF ETHNOGRAPHIC ENGAGEMENT
Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication - Angela Cora Garcia et al
Digital Ethnography - Dhiraj Murthy
An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research
Life in Virtual Worlds (American Behavioral Scientist 43(3): 436-449 [SAGE]) - T.L.Taylor
'Piling on Layers of Understanding' - Vanessa Dirksen, Ard Huizing and Bas Smit
The Use of Connective Ethnography for the Study of (Online) Work Practices
Mixed Methods for Mixed Reality - David Feldon and Yasmin Kafai
Understanding Users' Avatar Activities in Virtual Worlds
Co-Construction and Field Creation - Maximilian Forte
Website Development as both an Instrument and Relationship in Action Research
Towards Ethnography of Television on the Internet - Christine Hine
A Mobile Strategy for Exploring Mundane Interpretive Activities
Inside the 'Pro-Ana' Community - Sarah Brotsky and David Giles
A Covert Online Participant Observation
PART TWO: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 2: REASEARCH RELATIONSHIPS
Qualitative Interviewing in Internet Studies - Michelle Kazmer and Bo Xie
Playing with the Media, Playing with the Method
Reflecting on the Experience of Interviewing Online - Mark Davis et al
Perspectives from the Internet and HIV Study in London
E-Mail Interviewing in Qualitative Research - Lokman Meho
A Methodological Discussion
Credibility, Authenticity and Voice - Nalita James and Hugh Busher
Dilemmas in Online Interviewing
Online with the E-Mums - Clare Madge and Henrietta O'Connor
Exploring the Internet as a Medium for Research
In the Flesh or Online? Exploring Qualitative Research Methodologies - Wendy Seymour
Online Dating and Mating - Danielle Couch and Pranee Liamputtong
The Use of the Internet to Meet Sexual Partners
Online Focus Groups as a Tool to Collect Data in Hard-to-Include Populations - Kiek Tates et al
Examples from Paediatric Oncology
Doing Synchronous Online Focus Groups with Young People - Fiona Fox, Marianne Morris and Nichola Rumsey
Methodological Reflections
Researching Online Populations - Kate Stewart and Matthew Williams
The Use of Online Focus Groups for Social Research
A Daily Web Diary of the Sexual Experiences of Men Who Have Sex with Men - Keith Horvath, Blair Beadnell and Anne Bowen
Comparisons with a Retrospective Recall Survey
Virtual Fieldwork Using Access Grid - Nigel Fielding
VOLUME THREE
PART ONE: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 3: CORPUS-BASED APROACHES TO FOUND DATA
The YouTube Indian - Maria Kopacz and Bessie Lee Lawton
Portrayals of Native Americans on a Viral Video Site
'Am I Normal?' Teenagers, Sexual Health and the Internet - Kevin Harvey et al
Interviews and Internet Forums - Clive Seale et al
A Comparison of Two Sources of Qualitative Data
'Entering the Blogosphere' - Nicholas Hookway
Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research
Content Analysis of the World Wide Web - Christopher Weare and Wan-Ying Lin
Opportunities and Challenges
Time to Get Wired - Gerlinde Mautner
Using Web-Based Corpora in Critical Discourse Analysis
Website History and the Website as an Object of Study - Niels Br gger
PART TWO: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 4: NETWORK ANALYSIS
Bibliometrics to Webometrics - Mike Thelwall
Tunes That Bind? - Nancy Baym and Andrew Ledbetter
Sociology of Hyperlink Networks of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Twitter - Chien-Leng Hsu and Han Woo Park
A Case Study of South Korea
Landscaping Climate Change - Richard Rogers and Noortje Marres
A Mapping Technique for Understanding Science and Technology Debates on the World Wide Web
Online Collective Identity - Robert Ackland and Mathieu O'Neil
The Case of the Environmental Movement
PART THREE: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 5: EXPERIMENTS, SURVEYS AND SAMPLING
Conducting Internet Research with the Transgender Population - Michael Miner et al
Reaching Broad Samples and Collecting Valid Data
Surveying the Experience of Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer - Elizabeth Reed, Peter Simmonds and Jessica Corner
Comparing Face-to-Face and Online Recruitment
The Influence of the Design of Web Survey Questionnaires on the Quality of Responses - Stephane Ganassali
Using Questionnaire Design to Fight Non-Response Bias in Web Surveys - Paula Vicente and Elizabeth Reis
Comparing Response Rates from Web and Mail Surveys - Tse-Hua Shih and Xitao Fan
A Meta-Analysis
Virtual Experiments - Ulf-Dietrich Reips
A Psychological Laboratory on the Internet
True Experimental Data Collection on the Internet - Ulf-Dietrich Reips and John Krantz
VOLUME FOUR
PART ONE: INNOVATIONS IN THE RESEARCH PROCESS
Scholarly Communication 2.0 - Diego Ponte and Judith Simon
Exploring Researchers' Opinions on Web 2.0 for Scientific Knowledge Creation, Evaluation and Dissemination
Using Web 2.0 Tools for Qualitative Analysis - Silvana di Gregorio
An Exploration
Scholarly Blogging - Alexander Halavais
Moving toward the Visible College
Field Notes in Public - Nina Wakeford and Kris Cohen
Using Blogs for Research
E-Sciences as Research Technologies - Ralph Schroeder
Reconfiguring Disciplines, Globalizing Knowledge
PART TWO: ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research on Internet Communities - Gunther Eysenbach and James Till
Ethics of Internet Research - Elizabeth Bassett and Kate O'Riordan
Contesting the Human Subjects Research Model
Researching Personal Information on the Public Web - David Wilkinson and Mike Thelwall
Methods and Ethics
'But the Data Is Already Public' - Michael Zimmer
On the Ethics of Research in Facebook
'Go away' - James Hudson and Amy Bruckman
Participant Objections to Being Studied and the Ethics of Chatroom Research
Ethic as Method, Method as Ethic - Annette Markham
A Case for Reflexivity in Qualitative ICT Research
PART THREE: REFLECTIONS ON INNOVATION
How the Internet Is Changing the Implementation of Traditional Research Methods, People's Daily Lives and the Way in Which Developmental Scientists Conduct Research - Jaap Denissen, Linus Neumann and Maarten van Zalk
The Challenge of Changing Audiences or, What Is the Audience Researcher to Do in the Age of the Internet - Sonia Livingstone
New Avenues for Sociological Inquiry - Laura Robinson and Jeremy Schulz
Evolving Forms of Ethnographic Practice
The Growth of Internet Research Methods and the Reluctant Sociologist - Dan Farrell and James Petersen
Mediating Ethnography - Anne Beaulieu
Objectivity and the Making of Ethnographies of the Internet
Presidential Address - Don Dillman
Navigating the Rapids of Change
Some Observations on Survey Methodology in the Early 21st Century
Internet Research - Richard Rogers
The Question of Method: A Keynote Address from the 'YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States' Conference
Mobile Methods and the Empirical - Monika B scher and John Urry
by "Nielsen BookData"