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Virtual Research Methods
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Virtual Research Methods

Four Volume Set
Edited by:


October 2012 | 1 616 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
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.

 
VOLUME ONE
 
PART ONE: PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNET AS SOCIAL SPACE
Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler
Reducing Social Context Cues
Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication

 
Nancy Baym
The Emergence of Online Community
Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia
Virtual Communities as Communities
Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone

 
Kaveri Subrahmanyam and David Šmahel
Constructing Identity Online
Identity Exploration and Self-Presentation

 
ZeynepTufekci
Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and MySpace
Adam Joinson et al
Privacy, Trust and Self-Disclosure
Manuel Castells
Globalization, Networking, Urbanization
Reflections on the Spatial Dynamics of the Information Age

 
Eszter Hargittai
Minding the Digital Gap
Why Understanding Digital Inequality

 
Steve Jones
Fizz in the Field
Toward a Basis for an Emergent Internet Studies

 
 
PART TWO: RESEARCH SITES AND RESEARCH MODELS FOR THE INTERNET
Daniel Miller and Don
Conclusions
Christine Hine
Internet as Culture and Cultural Artefact
Allison Cavanagh
From Culture to Connection
Internet Community Studies

 
Tom Boellstorff
A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds
Nicole Constable
Love at First Sight? Visual Images and Virtual Encounters with Bodies
Jenna Burrell
The Field Site as a Network
A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research

 
The Ethnography of New Media Worlds? Following the Case of Global Poker

John Farnsworth and Terry Austrin
John Postill
Localizing the Internet beyond Communities and Networks
Luc Pauwels
Websites as Visual and Multimodal Cultural Expressions
Opportunities and Issues of Online Hybrid Media Research

 
 
VOLUME TWO
 
PART ONE : SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 1: MODES OF ETHNOGRAPHIC ENGAGEMENT
Angela Cora Garcia et al
Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication
Dhiraj Murthy
Digital Ethnography
An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research

 
T.L.Taylor
Life in Virtual Worlds (American Behavioral Scientist 43(3): 436-449 [SAGE])
Vanessa Dirksen, Ard Huizing and Bas Smit
'Piling on Layers of Understanding'
The Use of Connective Ethnography for the Study of (Online) Work Practices

 
David Feldon and Yasmin Kafai
Mixed Methods for Mixed Reality
Understanding Users' Avatar Activities in Virtual Worlds

 
Maximilian Forte
Co-Construction and Field Creation
Website Development as both an Instrument and Relationship in Action Research

 
Christine Hine
Towards Ethnography of Television on the Internet
A Mobile Strategy for Exploring Mundane Interpretive Activities

 
Sarah Brotsky and David Giles
Inside the 'Pro-Ana' Community
A Covert Online Participant Observation

 
 
PART TWO: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 2: REASEARCH RELATIONSHIPS
Michelle Kazmer and Bo Xie
Qualitative Interviewing in Internet Studies
Playing with the Media, Playing with the Method

 
Mark Davis et al
Reflecting on the Experience of Interviewing Online
Perspectives from the Internet and HIV Study in London

 
Lokman Meho
E-Mail Interviewing in Qualitative Research
A Methodological Discussion

 
Nalita James and Hugh Busher
Credibility, Authenticity and Voice
Dilemmas in Online Interviewing

 
Clare Madge and Henrietta O'Connor
Online with the E-Mums
Exploring the Internet as a Medium for Research

 
Wendy Seymour
In the Flesh or Online? Exploring Qualitative Research Methodologies
Danielle Couch and Pranee Liamputtong
Online Dating and Mating
The Use of the Internet to Meet Sexual Partners

 
Kiek Tates et al
Online Focus Groups as a Tool to Collect Data in Hard-to-Include Populations
Examples from Paediatric Oncology

 
Fiona Fox, Marianne Morris and Nichola Rumsey
Doing Synchronous Online Focus Groups with Young People
Methodological Reflections

 
Kate Stewart and Matthew Williams
Researching Online Populations
The Use of Online Focus Groups for Social Research

 
Keith Horvath, Blair Beadnell and Anne Bowen
A Daily Web Diary of the Sexual Experiences of Men Who Have Sex with Men
Comparisons with a Retrospective Recall Survey

 
Nigel Fielding
Virtual Fieldwork Using Access Grid
 
VOLUME THREE
 
PART ONE: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 3: CORPUS-BASED APROACHES TO FOUND DATA
Maria Kopacz and Bessie Lee Lawton
The YouTube Indian
Portrayals of Native Americans on a Viral Video Site

 
Kevin Harvey et al
'Am I Normal?' Teenagers, Sexual Health and the Internet
Clive Seale et al
Interviews and Internet Forums
A Comparison of Two Sources of Qualitative Data

 
Nicholas Hookway
'Entering the Blogosphere'
Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research

 
Christopher Weare and Wan-Ying Lin
Content Analysis of the World Wide Web
Opportunities and Challenges

 
Gerlinde Mautner
Time to Get Wired
Using Web-Based Corpora in Critical Discourse Analysis

 
Niels Br gger
Website History and the Website as an Object of Study
 
PART TWO: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 4: NETWORK ANALYSIS
Mike Thelwall
Bibliometrics to Webometrics
Nancy Baym and Andrew Ledbetter
Tunes That Bind?
Chien-Leng Hsu and Han Woo Park
Sociology of Hyperlink Networks of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Twitter
A Case Study of South Korea

 
Richard Rogers and Noortje Marres
Landscaping Climate Change
A Mapping Technique for Understanding Science and Technology Debates on the World Wide Web

 
Robert Ackland and Mathieu O'Neil
Online Collective Identity
The Case of the Environmental Movement

 
 
PART THREE: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES AND APPROACHES 5: EXPERIMENTS, SURVEYS AND SAMPLING
Michael Miner et al
Conducting Internet Research with the Transgender Population
Reaching Broad Samples and Collecting Valid Data

 
Elizabeth Reed, Peter Simmonds and Jessica Corner
Surveying the Experience of Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer
Comparing Face-to-Face and Online Recruitment

 
Stéphane Ganassali
The Influence of the Design of Web Survey Questionnaires on the Quality of Responses
Paula Vicente and Elizabeth Reis
Using Questionnaire Design to Fight Non-Response Bias in Web Surveys
Tse-Hua Shih and Xitao Fan
Comparing Response Rates from Web and Mail Surveys
A Meta-Analysis

 
Ulf-Dietrich Reips
Virtual Experiments
A Psychological Laboratory on the Internet

 
Ulf-Dietrich Reips and John Krantz
True Experimental Data Collection on the Internet
 
VOLUME FOUR
 
PART ONE: INNOVATIONS IN THE RESEARCH PROCESS
Diego Ponte and Judith Simon
Scholarly Communication 2.0
Exploring Researchers' Opinions on Web 2.0 for Scientific Knowledge Creation, Evaluation and Dissemination

 
Silvana di Gregorio
Using Web 2.0 Tools for Qualitative Analysis
An Exploration

 
Alexander Halavais
Scholarly Blogging
Moving toward the Visible College

 
Nina Wakeford and Kris Cohen
Field Notes in Public
Using Blogs for Research

 
Ralph Schroeder
E-Sciences as Research Technologies
Reconfiguring Disciplines, Globalizing Knowledge

 
 
PART TWO: ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Gunther Eysenbach and James Till
Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research on Internet Communities
Elizabeth Bassett and Kate O'Riordan
Ethics of Internet Research
Contesting the Human Subjects Research Model

 
David Wilkinson and Mike Thelwall
Researching Personal Information on the Public Web
Methods and Ethics

 
Michael Zimmer
'But the Data Is Already Public'
On the Ethics of Research in Facebook

 
James Hudson and Amy Bruckman
'Go away'
Participant Objections to Being Studied and the Ethics of Chatroom Research

 
Annette Markham
Ethic as Method, Method as Ethic
A Case for Reflexivity in Qualitative ICT Research

 
 
PART THREE: REFLECTIONS ON INNOVATION
Jaap Denissen, Linus Neumann and Maarten van Zalk
How the Internet Is Changing the Implementation of Traditional Research Methods, People's Daily Lives and the Way in Which Developmental Scientists Conduct Research
Sonia Livingstone
The Challenge of Changing Audiences or, What Is the Audience Researcher to Do in the Age of the Internet
Laura Robinson and Jeremy Schulz
New Avenues for Sociological Inquiry
Evolving Forms of Ethnographic Practice

 
Dan Farrell and James Petersen
The Growth of Internet Research Methods and the Reluctant Sociologist
Anne Beaulieu
Mediating Ethnography
Objectivity and the Making of Ethnographies of the Internet

 
Don Dillman
Presidential Address
Navigating the Rapids of Change

 
Some Observations on Survey Methodology in the Early 21st Century

 
Richard Rogers
Internet Research
The Question of Method: A Keynote Address from the 'YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States' Conference

 
Monika B scher and John Urry
Mobile Methods and the Empirical

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ISBN: 9780857027405
£710.00