You are here

Researching Society Online
Share
Share

Researching Society Online

Four Volume Set
Edited by:


July 2014 | 1 568 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

The history of internet research methods is, naturally, much shorter than the histories of other research methods in the social sciences, though no less rich or significant as a result. The early development of distributed networked communications in the 1960s and 1970s can be seen as a relevant pre-history and emergence period for the internet, and consequently the birth of the world wide web in the early 1990s saw the internet truly break out from being a rather technical tool into a more ubiquitous aspect of everyday life. This four-volume collection begins with some of the earliest works on what was or was to become the internet, moving methodically through to present-day issues. The esteemed editorial team has selected for inclusion literatures which address a wide range of topics, and the collection is further set in context by an illuminating introductory chapter in Volume 1.


 
VOLUME ONE: The Social Context of Online Research
 
Part One: Classics
Cyburgs. Review of ‘the Virtual Community. Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier’ by Howard Rheingold

William Sims Bainbridge
Review of ‘Virtual Reality’ by Howard Rheingold

J. Timmons Roberts
Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere

Craig Calhoun
Towards a Sociology of the Network Society

Manuel Castells
Materials for the Exploration of the Network Society

Manuel Castells
An Introduction to the Information Age

Manuel Castells
Network Rules of Order: Regulating Speech in Public Electronic Fora

William Dutton
Proper Methodologies for Psychological and Sociological Studies Conducted via the Internet

Claire Hewson, Dianna Laurent and Carl Vogel
Catching Cybercriminals: Policing the Internet

David Wall
Consumption and Digital Commodities in the Everyday

Mark Poster
 
Part Two: Digital Divides and Exclusions
Social Implications of the Internet

Paul DiMaggio et al.
Exploring the Digital Divide Internet Connectedness and Age

William Loges and Joo-Young Jung
Beyond Access: The Digital Divide and Internet Uses and Gratifications

Jaeho Cho et al.
The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon

Jan Van Dijk and Ken Hacker
New Social Survey Perspectives on the Digital Divide

John Robinson, Paul DiMaggio and Eszter Hargittai
Reconsidering Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide

Neil Selwyn
Digital Divide Research, Achievements and Shortcomings

Jan Van Dijk
Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Political and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use

Mauro Guillén and Sandra Suárez
Social Movements and New Media

Brian Loader
Coming of (Old) Age in the Digital Age: ICT Usage and Non-Usage among Older Adults

Barbara Barbosa Neves, Fausto Amaro and Jaime Fonseca
 
VOLUME TWO: Critical and 'Live' Issues in Researching Society Online
 
Part One: Gender and the Internet
Net Gains, Net Losses

Cheris Kramarae and Jana Kramer
Gendered Conversational Rituals on the Internet: An Effective Voice Is Based on More than Simply What One Is Saying

Pamela Cushing
Women's Studies Online Cyberfeminism or Cyberhype?

Ivy Schweitzer
Gender and the Internet

Hiroshi Ono and Madeline Zavodny
Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In What State Is the Art?

Judy Wajcman
Cultural Production, Transnational Networking, and Critical Reflection in Feminist Zines

Elke Zobl
“Click Here” A Content Analysis of Internet Rape Sites

Jennifer Lynn Gossett and Sarah Byrne
Progressive Yet Traditional

Stephen Koerning and Neil Granitz
Feminist Sexualities, Race and the Internet: An Investigation of Suicidegirls.Com

Shoshana Magnet
Gender, Space, and Discourse across Borders: Talking Gender in Cyberspace

Janemaree Maher and Chng Huang Hoon
 
Part Two: Research Ethics and Researching Sensitive Topics
Using the Internet for Survey Research

Ross Coomber
Ethical Issues in Conducting Sex Research on the Internet

Yitzchak Binik, Kenneth Mah and Sara Kiesler
Ethical Issues for Qualitative Research in On-Line Communities

Charlotte Brownlow and Lindsay O’Dell
What Is Special about the Ethical Issues in Online Research?

Dag Elgesem
Internet Research: An Opportunity to Revisit Classic Ethical Problems in Behavioral Research

David Pittenger
“Go Away”: Participant Objections to Being Studied and the Ethics of Chatroom Research

James Hudson and Amy Bruckman
Internet Users’ Perceptions of ‘Privacy Concerns’ and ‘Privacy Actions’

Carina Paine et al.
Development of Measures of Online Privacy Concern and Protection for Use on the Internet

Tom Buchanan et al.
Ethical Pluralism and Global Information Ethics

Charles Ess
Children's Use of the Internet: Reflections on the Emerging Research Agenda

Sonia Livingstone
Gradations in Digital Inclusion: Children, Young People and the Digital Divide

Sonia Livingstone
“But the Data Is Already Public”: On the Ethics of Research in Facebook

Michael Zimmer
An Ethics of Intimacy: Online Dating, Viral-Sociality and Living with HIV

Fadhila Mazanderani
 
VOLUME THREE: Online Data Collection Methods
 
Part One: Internet as a Medium (Interviews/Questionnaires etc.)
The e-Interview

Roberta Bampton and Christopher Cowton
E-mail Interviewing in Qualitative Research: A Methodological Discussion

Lokman Meho
Qualitative Interviewing in Internet Studies: Playing with the Media, Playing with the Method

Michelle Kazmer and Bo Xie
Why Are Adolescents Addicted to Online Gaming? An Interview Study in Taiwan

Chin-Sheng Wan and Wen-Bin Chiou
Interviews and Internet Forums: A Comparison of Two Sources of Qualitative Data

Clive Seale et al.
Web-based Questionnaires and the Mode Effect: An Evaluation Based on Completion Rates and Data Contents of Near-Identical Questionnaires Delivered in Different Modes

Martyn Denscombe
Social Desirability, Anonymity, and Internet-based Questionnaires

Adam Joinson
Web Surveys: A Review of Issues and Approaches

Mick Couper
Should We Trust Web-based Studies? A Comparative Analysis of Six Preconceptions about Internet Questionnaires

Samuel Gosling et al.
The Impact of Material Incentives on Response Quantity, Response Quality, Sample Composition, Survey Outcome, and Cost in Online Access Panels

Anja Goritz
Fans, Homophobia and Masculinities in Association Football: Evidence of a More Inclusive Environment

Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland
 
Part Two: Internet Ethnography
Trading Sexpics on IRC: Embodiment and Authenticity on the Internet

Don Slater
Cyberspace and Identity

Sherry Turkle
Internet Research and the Sociology of Cyber-Social-Scientific Knowledge

Christine Hine
Inside the “Pro-ana” Community: A Covert Online Participant Observation

Sarah Brotsky and David Giles
Avatar Watching: Participant Observation in Graphical Online Environments

Matthew Williams
The Internet in Everyday Life: Computer Networking from the Standpoiont of the Domestic User

Maria Bakardjieva and Richard Smith
Normativity and the Principle of Materiality: A View from Digital Anthropology

Heather Horst and Daniel Miller
Polymedia: Towards a New Theory of Digital Media in Interpersonal Communication

Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller
Internet Ethnography: Online and Offline

Liav Sade-Beck
Digital Ethnography an Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research

Dhiraj Murthy
Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication

Angela Cora Garcia et al.
 
VOLUME FOUR: Innovation in Researching Society Online
 
Part One: Internet as ‘Unobtrusive Measures’
The Rebirth of the Football Fanzine: Using E-zines as Data Source

Peter Millward
What Are They Doing? Dilemmas in Analysing Bibliographic Searching: Cultural and Technical Networks in Academic Life

Matthew David and David Zeitlyn
Learning Users' Interests by Unobtrusively Observing Their Normal Behavior

Jeremy Goecks and Jude Shavlik
Psychological research online: report of Board of Scientific Affairs' Advisory Group on the Conduct of Research on the Internet

Robert Kraut et al.
Privacy Dictionary: A New Resource for the Automated Content Analysis of Privacy

Asimina Vasalou et al.
 
Part Two: Cutting edge case studies
The Internet for Empowerment of Minority and Marginalized Users

Bharat Mehra, Cecelia Merkel and Ann Peterson Bishop
Disciplining the Future: A Critical Organizational Analysis of Internet Studies

Annette Markham
Global Networks and Their Effects on Culture

Alexander Galloway
Making Friends with Jarvis Cocker: Music Culture in the Context of Web 2.0

David Beer
The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

Mike Savage and Roger Burrows
Some Further Reflections on the Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

Mike Savage and Roger Burrows
Qualitative Methods III: Animating Archives, Artful Interventions and Online Environments

Clarie Dwyer and Gail Davies
Entering the Blogosphere’: Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research

Nicholas Hookway
Netnography: A Method Specifically Designed to Study Cultures and Communities Online

Gary Bowler
Wisdom of the Crowd or Technicity of Content? Wikipedia as a Sociotechnical System

Sabine Niederer and José van Dijck

Matthew David

Matthew David is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Durham University, and has undertaken research in the areas of new social movements, online data-services in higher education, online training in rural areas and forms of free online music sharing. He is author of Science in Society (Palgrave 2005) and Peer to Peer and the Music Industry (SAGE 2010), and co-author of Social Research (SAGE, latest edition 2011). More About Author

Peter Millward

Peter Millward is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Liverpool John Moores University. Peter has published widely in areas relating to both sociological dimensions of the Internet and contemporary football fandom. His second monograph, The Global Football League: Transnational Network, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age was published by Palgrave in 2011. More About Author