From Cyberspace to the Dataverse: Trajectories in Digital Social Research
Big Data? Qualitative Approaches to Digital Research
ISBN: 978-1-78441-051-3, eISBN: 978-1-78441-050-6
Publication date: 3 November 2014
Abstract
Purpose
To outline the current trajectories in digital social research and to highlight the roles of qualitative research in those trajectories.
Design/methodology/approach
A secondary analysis of the primary literature.
Findings
Qualitative research has shifted over time in relation to rapidly changing digital phenomena, but arguably finds itself in ‘crisis’ when faced with algorithms and ubiquitous digital data. However, there are many highly significant qualitative approaches that are being pursued and have the potential to contextualize, situate and critique narratives and practices of data.
Originality/value
To situate current debates around methods within longer trajectories of digital social research, recognizing their conceptual, disciplinary and empirical commitments.
Keywords
Citation
Hand, M. (2014), "From Cyberspace to the Dataverse: Trajectories in Digital Social Research", Big Data? Qualitative Approaches to Digital Research (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1042-319220140000013002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014 Emerald Group Publishing Limited