Innovations in Digital Research Methods

Peter Halfpenny is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He was Executive Director of the ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science from 2004 to 2010, responsible for the overall strategic management of the Centre’s programme of research, outreach and capacity-building. Peter’s own research interests are in the integration of computer tools and services into a comprehensive support environment for social science researcher practitioners, and the investigation of the adoption and adaptation of e-Science tools across the social research community.  Rob Procter is Professor of Social Informatics in the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, where he is deputy head of department and research director of the Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities (WISC), and Exchange Professor, NYU. Previously, he was research director of the ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science, where he contributed to developing innovations in e-Infrastructure, tools and methods in the social sciences. ???????One focus of his current work is methodologies and tools for big social data analytics. Rob led a multidisciplinary team working with the Guardian/LSE on the ‘Reading the Riots’ project, analysing tweets sent during the August 2011 riots. This won the Data Visualization and Storytelling category of the 2012 Data Journalism Awards and the 2012 Online Media Award for the ‘Best use of Social Media’. He is also a co-founder of the Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (Cosmos), a multidisciplinary group of UK researchers building a platform for social data analytics. Rob is editor of the Health Informatics Journal and advisory board member, Big Data and Society Journal.

From machine learning tweets to ethical considerations of Big Data, this timely book provides a highly interdisciplinary survey of innovative digital research methods. The book uniquely blurs qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide refreshingly forward-looking insights for those new to digital research, but also for those more experienced in the field.

• Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview - Peter Halfpenny and Rob ProctorChapter 2: The Changing Social Data Landscape - Kingsley Purdam and Mark ElliotChapter 3: Exploiting New Sources of Data - Kingsley Purdam and Mark ElliotChapter 4: Survey Methods: Challenges and Opportunities - Joe MurphyChapter 5: Advances in Data Management for Social Survey - Paul S. LambertChapter 6: Modelling and Simulation - Mark Birkin and Nick MallesonChapter 7: Contemporary developments in statistical software for social scientists - Paul S. Lambert, William J. Browne and Danius T. MichaelidesChapter 8: Text Mining and Social Media: When Quantitative Meets Qualitative, and Software Meets People - Lawrence Ampofo, Simon Collister, Ben O’Loughlin and Andrew ChadwickChapter 9: Digital Records and the Digital Replay System - Andy Crabtree, Paul Tennent, Pat Brundell and Dawn KnightChapter 10: Social Network Analysis - Robert Ackland and Jonathan ZhuChapter 11: Visualising Spatial Data and Social Media - Michael Batty, Steven Gray, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Richard Milton, Oliver O’Brien and Flora RoumpaniChapter 12: Ethical Praxis in e-Research - R.J. Anderson and Marina JirotkaChapter 13: Sociology and the Digital Challenge - Mike Savage