Summary
Contents
Subject index
A guide to understanding digital research from both a conceptual and practical perspective, helping the reader to make sense of the issues, challenges and opportunities of social science research in the digital age. The book will help the reader to understand how the digital context impacts on social science research and is divided into three main sections: • A Justification & Reconceptualization of Digital Research: The authors explore how far the digital environment is transforming social science research. • Accessing Digital Data: An outline of the characteristics of digital data, temporality issues in digital research and different data sources. • Moving Forward with Digital Research: Examining the practicalities of how to conduct digital research, with examples and suggestions to strengthen the implementation of digital research. Suitable for Masters and Doctoral students undertaking digital or online research methods courses, as well as anyone doing a research project or dissertation with an online component.
Data Sources for Digital Research
Data Sources for Digital Research
In this chapter we will:
- provide different ways to consider data sources when conducting digital research
- outline who and what can be accessed through digital research
- highlight population and sampling concepts as they relate to digital research
- propose different possible foci for sampling considerations
- contribute key reflective questions to ask when making sampling decisions.
Introduction
As researchers conducting primary research, whether digital or not, whether positivist or interpretivist, we need to access data either from people (who), or events or things (what) (i.e., entities) to examine the phenomena that are of interest to us. This research entity needs to be defined and identified if we are to be able to gather information from or about it in order to answer our research objectives. The research ...
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