Research Ethics

Accepting ethic norms involves naturalization of beliefs, assuming them as unalterable truths. Social sciences have been inscribed with certain standards for years. In the last twenty-five years, the practice of having research projects approved by ethics committees has become institutionalized, in some cases leading to extreme bureaucracy and changing the character of the issue, shifting the weight from the personal moral obligation of the researcher and an issue that requires high flexibility and individualism towards a set of forms to be filled out, pseudo-warrants of the safety of the research subjects. However, Internet research has opened the eyes of the sociologists to new problems and caused reconsideration of some issues of research ethics. This chapter discusses key notions of research ethics in the digital studies context. It shows how internet can be a source of infamy, and warns against improper use of data. It positions the fundamental rules of anonymity, privacy, informed consent, data ownership, as well as data confidentiality in the context of digital social studies.

Online Revolution

This chapter discusses three major changes resulting from the emerging communication technologies. It addresses the new forms of shaping relations online. Friendships, intimacy, the rise of weak ties, as well as an increased fluidity of relations are discussed. Next, the chapter addresses the demise of expert knowledge. Starting with McDonaldization of higher education and the rise of anti-intellectual sentiments, the chapter addresses the new trends in democratizing knowledge. While recognizing highly positive aspects of the turn, such as citizen science, Wikipedia, or free/open source movement, it also addresses the darker and more troubling processes, such as anti-scientific sentiments, pseudotheories, and the takeover of knowledge production and distribution by quacks. Finally, the chapter focuses on sharing economy. By problematizing the “sharing” premise, as well as by showing the impact of the ongoing change reaching far beyond economy itself, the chapter introduces the notion of collaborative society, as better covering the social change we witness.

Final Remarks

This chapter includes the final remarks about conducting digital social studies. It summarizes the book briefly and encourages to start own independent projects. This monograph has presented the variety of approaches and tools to conduct social research of and through the online world. It explained why the Internet ought to be the subject of sociological studies, and why even traditional social sciences projects ought to include elements of online research. It identified three trends that are strictly connected with the development of communication technology and networks (online transformation of interpersonal relations, crisis of expert knowledge, and the sharing economy). It indicated their importance in many areas, and the need for deep and recurring social science analyses due to the high changeability of the phenomena. It then described the main quantitative approaches, focusing on those that do not require long-term specialist training. It highlighted those qualitative methods that may be used to interpret quantitative research and be a starting point for qualitative analysis. It outlined the possibilities of doing online cultural studies—studying products of Internet culture as a valid method of doing social sciences. Finally, it outlined the ethical considerations that every author of a digital study ought to consider.

Methods of Researching Online Communities

The chapter presents the idea of Thick Big Data, a methodological approach combining big data sets with thick, ethnographic analysis. It presents different quantitative methods, including Google Correlate, social network analysis (SNA), online polls, culturomics, and data scraping, as well as easy tools to start working with online data. It describes the key differences in performing qualitative studies online, by focusing on the example of digital ethnography. It helps using case studies for digital communities as well. It gives specific guidance on conducting interviews online, and describes how to perform narrative analysis of digital culture. It concludes with describing methods of studying online cultural production, and discusses the notions of remix culture, memes, and trolling.

Introduction

Researching social phenomena online could, until quite recently, be perceived as a novelty. Nowadays, practically every research project in the social sciences needs to take online research into account. An important share of interpersonal interactions and social life has migrated into the online realm. This means that to maintain the current level of interest and detail of social analysis, the introduction of online research is increasingly necessary. This chapter introduces the idea of incorporating digital social science into any social studies project. It argues that not involving an analysis of online communities and social life is no longer an option for the vast majority of social sciences projects. It introduces the three possible approaches to understanding online social sciences: studying people while using the Internet, studying online communities, studying online culture output. It argues that doing research on avatars should be supplemented by doing research on actual people.