Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net

by Steven Jones (Editor)

Overview

The Internet is a medium with great consequences for social and economic life. This book is written to help people discern in what ways it has commanded the public imagination, and the methodological issues that arise when one tries to study and understand the social processes occurring within it. The contributors offer original responses in the search for, and critique of, methods with which to study the Internet and the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within and around it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761915959
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	11/03/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steve Jones is UIC Distinguished Professor of Communication and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA and Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is editor of New Media & Society and co-editor of Mobile Media & Communication. His research interests encompass popular music studies, music technology, sound studies, internet studies, media history, virtual reality, human-machine communication, social robotics and human augmentics. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and the Tides Foundation.

Table of Contents

Introduction - James T Costigan
Forests, Trees and Internet Research
Studying the Net - Steve Jones
Intricacies and Issues
Complementary Explorative Data Analysis - Fay Sudweeks and Simeon J Simoff
The Reconciliation of Quantitative and Qualitative Principles
Recontextualizing ‘Cyberspace' - Lori Kendall
Methodological Considerations for On-line Research
Studying On-line Social Networks - Laura Garton, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman
Cybertalk and the Method of Instances - Norman K Denzin
Configuring as a Mode of Rhetorical Analysis - James J Sosnoski
From Paper-and-Pencil to Screen-and-Keyboard - Diane F Witmer, Robert W Colman and Sandra Lee Katzman
Toward a Methodology for Survey Research on the Internet
Measuring Internet Audiences - Margaret Mc Laughlin et al
Patrons of an On-line Art Museum
Analyzing the Web - Ananda Mitra and Elisia Cohen
Directions and Challenges
There is a There There - Jan Fernback
Notes toward a Definition of Cybercommunity
Researching and Creating Community Networks - Teresa M Harrison and Timothy Stephen
Beyond Netiquette - Barbara F Sharf
The Ethics of Doing Naturalistic Discourse Research on the Internet
Thinking the Internet - Jonathan Sterne
Cultural Studies versus the Millennium

Editorial Reviews

Thirteen studies question the wisdom of using the existing arsenal of research methods and theories in the study of the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within and around the Internet. Coverage includes the use of interactive features to help generate a more accurate picture of a site's audience; the differences between traditional texts and the WWW text; the ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the Internet; the study of social relations in cyberspace; and foundations and goals of computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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