Read Understanding Research Online
Authors: Marianne Franklin
Understanding Research (21 page)
Online research and web-resourcing skills
Topics covered in this chapter:
- Terms of reference
- Internet (literature) resources
- Digital data-gathering and analysis tools
- Online research: fields, relationships, ethics
- Web-analysis: sites, maps, links, communities
As computer protocols enable individuals to interact in new ways, they open new spaces and forms of interactions that warrant research. Likewise they make it possible to conduct research in new ways.
(Gaiser and Schreiner 2009: 5)
The quote above captures how the internet, however conceived and experienced these days, plays multiple roles in a researcher’s life, and the life-cycle of a research project. As intimated in the last chapter, it is a powerful resource for locating empirical material, general information, and specialized literature. It is also a domain – a
research field – and access point for more and more projects across the disciplines. Moreover, there is a plethora of tools – products and services, and functionalities that are peculiar to the internet that signal new methodologies if not fundamental reconsiderations of existing ones.
Getting a research project underway and successfully completed has become increasingly dependent on computers, computer-mediated communications, and software packages; a fact of life encapsulated by how the internet has become par for the course in higher education and research cultures around the world. There are two broad avenues to explore in this respect: first, the practical skills, formal and informal know-how, for making good use of the internet for academic research purposes. Second, issues that arise when designing and carrying out any level of
online research
; for example, from participant-observation when researching internet communities, to studying blogs, conducting a textual analysis of web-content, carrying out internet-based surveys – large or small, mapping web-based networks, to studying the private lives of
avatars
or computer-mediated intimacies between humans.
Because these two paths cross one another at regular intervals, making an effort to think about the role
information and communication technologies
(ICTs), the web especially, play in your own research is time well-spent. Frequently asked questions from research students include ones such as:
- How do I go about finding literature and other resources on the web?
- What is the best way to process and archive web-based data?
- What counts as data, access, and transparency in online settings?
- What is the relationship between observer and observed online?
- What are the limits to researching the web?
Are
there any limits? - Are online resources, for example, Wikipedia, legitimate academic sources?
Some of these point to particular skills needed for doing effective internet-based research; technical practicalities about finding and using internet resources. Others overlap with topics covered in previous and subsequent chapters, fuelling debates about the legitimacy if not the practicability of not only online research but also web-based literature and information. They cut across all modes of research in terms of the challenges and opportunities presented by the internet as a research tool and the web as a research terrain.
The main distinction for research that occurs at any point between each end of the qualitative and quantitative spectrum is the degree to which the automated and computational powers of content-analysis software, web-based survey tools, and statistical programs are put to use. This chapter concentrates on the following aspects to conducting online research, and related internet research skills:
- finding academic resources on the web;
- best practices when re/searching the web;
- using software packages and web-based research tools;
- referencing, archiving, and presenting web-based findings;
- ethical and legal issues;
- emerging web-based, web-driven methods and topics.
For some skills, such as locating and organizing literature and other sources of information, and methods like surveys or interviews, best practices for conducting these effectively in ‘real life’ – offline – also apply online. But they also bring with them particular pitfalls for web-based situations.
In the second instance, designing an online research project confronts researchers sooner or later with a number of practical and ethical decisions; for example, the rights and obligations for anyone wanting to research password-protected groups on the web, if not observe interactions taking place in open-access spaces. Research into computer games or computer simulations also brings with it issues specific to the way data, and research subjects, have acquired digital form and corollary computer-coded legal identities in recent years: the IP address of your computer, or the repertoire of login names and passwords that many of us need for everyday and scholarly internet access are cases in point.
These considerations have implications not only for research design conventions in social research generally, but more importantly for how respective codes of research ethics are dealing with these concerns across academic disciplines, administrations, and funding bodies.
This is a fast-changing area where terminologies are quickly out of date, indeed ‘date’ the author even more quickly. As this book goes to press, and I update yet again the technical details and terms of reference for this particular chapter, the way the internet is a moving target in all its multifaceted applications for research, as well as for everyday life, underscores the inbuilt ‘sell-by date’ of pretty much 99 per cent of any specific brand names, goods and services mentioned from here on in.
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However, with an eye on developing an understanding of basic principles, and given that many critical functionalities of the web remain constant since its early years (back in the 1980s if not before), the following objectives will hopefully bear the test of time, namely that even if you are not undertaking some sort of ‘online research’, by the end of this chapter you will have
- familiarized yourself, updated, or deepened knowledge about the internet as a resource, research domain, and object of research;
- a sharper sense of the practicalities and pitfalls of online fieldwork;
- extended and refined current internet skills for
research
purposes; - a greater awareness of ethical issues and accountability for conducting online research;
- a clearer idea of the emerging areas of web-analysis and their implications for how you go about designing an inquiry located online, in part or in whole.
The chapter covers a range of topics in a question and answer format; this is an ongoing conversation and evolving set of values and principles for not only research practice but also everyday life. My thanks to past and present students for their contribution to these conversations and the way they keep me on my toes.
Whether or not the internet figures strongly for your research project, it has acquired a ubiquity in research communities the world over. The hardware and software of the
information and communication technologies
(ICT) that make the internet at once a highly personalized resource and the quintessential local–global universal connector are now indispensable to how we think, communicate and undertake research. From philosophers at one end of the humanities spectrum through to social scientists, through to microbiologists at the natural sciences end, computers – as individual machines and as the interconnected networks of the internet today – perform vital research-related functions.
Modern-day computing has also contributed to an increase in the
quantity
of empirical data available, the numerous forms in which evidence is produced, analysed, and presented; all of which have created distinctive
sorts
of knowledge, research fields, and controversies as research communities actively (or reluctantly) develop approaches for dealing with computer-mediated research.
Working researchers and their students tend to fall into two broad camps, depending on geographic location, the level of internet infrastructure, and research culture:
- For many educator-researchers, and certainly for upcoming generations of undergraduates, the internet – the web – is the first stop, if not the only stop for accessing literature, getting facts, or exchanging ideas and plans with our peers and assessors. This is its strength, but it is also its weakness as the web is huge, the information available there expanding, and the rules governing access and
comportment under scrutiny. At the same time vast amounts of information, still viable resources, and online communities are disappearing from view as they go offline, are archived, or deleted from the visible web made accessible to us by search engines. - For others, the web is their research domain – field, sub-topic, or community – of choice; to locate particular sorts of online communities, enter various virtual worlds, or investigate textual/visual content. Some may conduct research that is entirely immersed in online domains, using methods developed by and for these computer-mediated undertakings. In this respect the term
online research
refers to the gamut of digital content, computer-mediated communities, relationships, and networks.
Whilst in computer-mediated scenarios many of the decisions governing respective disciplinary conventions of what constitutes viable research come under existing methodological rubrics, others see research students sometimes stranded in what is relatively uncharted territory. Here traditional boundaries and methodological working practices have less traction or are being transformed; whether anthropologists doing various sorts of ‘virtual ethnography’ are really doing fieldwork, how they get close to their ‘local inhabitants’, is one example.
For this reason online research is exciting and challenging for researchers – students and supervisors. There are new notions of ‘mixed-method’ or ‘multi-sited’ research design along with emerging disciplines based on the internet and/or the web as an object of theory and research in their own right.
The ways we use the internet in our everyday lives and workplace add up to a set of internet competencies: forms of ‘computer literacy’. This hands-on knowledge develops in generic and individual ways, for instance how we go about searching the web, manage incoming and outgoing emails, identify ourselves when registering for online services or interacting with others online in open or restricted-access web-spaces, locate reliable sources of news and information, or find out what’s on this weekend.
Many of us already have some idea about how to access, format, and handle
digital
data – as textual, multimedia, or visual content – when we file our email messages, comb an online catalogue for the latest literature such as journal article abstracts, register on
listservs
and
research hubs
in order to keep abreast of developments in our field of interest, or when we want to track down an item (person, gig, news, music, book) by any combination of the above. Indeed, many readers may already be quite well-advanced in designing and maintaining websites, computer-aided graphic design, using spreadsheet programs (for example, MS Access, or MS Excel), in manipulating images, or in layout design for desktop publishing. Some of you may already write your own software programs, run an internet service provider or related service, or are proficient in accessing or adapting pre-existing software; or be members of
hacker
communities and proud of it.
Figure this: can you imagine designing, carrying out and then writing up your research project without access to a computer, the web, or email?
Computer-skills are cumulative, ones we learn-by-doing over time; once we have got over that first entry-threshold, that is. Whilst there are indeed varying access thresholds and respective ‘levels of difficulty’, including an unwritten hierarchy of expertise and jargon amongst high-level user-groups, genders, generations, and parts of the world, many of us also regularly engage in low-level computer programming without realizing it. For instance: when we edit our profile on social networking platforms, download software in order to bypass more expensive products and services, when we set up our new laptops, or mobile phones, when we set up new programs or edit our images, or when we find ourselves having to re-install faulty, virus-infected, or malicious (
malware
) programs.
Don’t I need to be an advanced computer user to conduct an online research project; beyond accessing the web for ideas, background information, or free literature, that is?
- No you don’t. However, if you are uncertain do a self-evaluation of your skills, financial resources, internet access, software and hardware set-up first.
Do I have to use the internet, or use an online research method in my research project?
- No you don’t. But if you do, then remember that any internet-based method/s you may be looking at need to make sense for your research question.
All this know-how, and accompanying assumptions about what should work best, is evident as we set about using the internet for general research purposes or set about a piece of
online research
.
The web-based fields, internet resources, or software tools we encounter as researchers have a different dimension to those we use everyday or professionally: for example, the effective use of various techniques for carrying out a keyword search with any
search engine
(i.e. searching, or ‘browsing’ the web by typing in keywords, scanning a document by using an integrated ‘find’ tool), keeping track when navigating the
open web
(see Ó Dochartaigh 2009: 59
passim
) as we move backwards, forwards, or sideways between
hyperlinks
, organizing and then archiving,
bookmarking
websites for later reference, learning how to create or use
web-caches
to
code
a document. In sum, education, funding flows, and academic research have all become inseparable from three generic sorts of computer-mediated practice: word-processing, electronic correspondence, and web-based search engines (see Brabazon 2007, Latour 2007, Lazuly 2003).
Do you think the way you search the web, use your word-processing package, or set up your computer is the only, if not the best way?
- Not necessarily. There are many ways to perform these functions, some already written into the program, as
defaults
. Others evolve through use or when someone shows us another way. - There are few
wrong
ways of accessing or navigating your way around cyberspace as there are many ways to get around the web or use a computer; i.e. if it works, it can’t be wrong! - However there are many other, sometimes more effective, more satisfying ways of doing so, particularly for research purposes.
When these habitual actions become integral to achieving a satisfactory outcome in research terms, they can appear to be less well-honed, less self-explanatory.
BOX 5.1 FREQUENTLY ‘UNASKED QUESTIONS’ ABOUT ONLINE RESEARCH
These are a number of assumptions that remain moot in classroom, or supervisory sessions.
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After all, these technologies are those of today’s generation of students and as such there is a certain level of assumed knowledge.
- I don’t need to learn anything about research and the internet; I use the web everyday/am a website designer/hacker/media practitioner.
- Observing an online community/social network/listserv is OK if it is open-access,
i.e. not password-protected. - Accessing a closed (password-protected) community only requires the administrator’s approval.
- If I disclose my researcher status to an online community it will bias my findings so it is preferable to stay hidden (‘lurk’).
- I can back-up all my research data/findings in a ‘cloud’ archiving service.
- Using a software data-analysis tool cuts down on the work, does it all for me
- Citing an internet source is easy: just cut-and-paste the URL (internet address).
- Email-based interviews are not as good as face-to-face ones.
- Email-based or other software-based surveys are easier and save time.
- Google is the only search engine worth using because its results are the best.
What works for us at home when we are web-searching or interacting with others online can be put to good use in our research project, and so it should. However, some readers may think that this is all they need to know; no need to be given instructions on how to use the internet as a research resource, learn about or upgrade our internet (research) skills, and little need to bother with ethical issues because the internet is, by definition, the research tool and resource for the ‘today generation’. For instance: any reference to services or programs from further back than last year is prehistoric; the web is a public space so ‘all bets are off’: researchers can roam freely and observe with impunity; information online is free – for the most part if you know where to go; findings can be easily stored on a portable device or, even better, backed up by
depositing it in an archiving service based on
cloud computing
. Just as our photos and contact details, and those of all our friends are backed up for us by our social networking site or email service provider, low-cost or free data-archive services are now available to archive our research findings too.
I am already an advanced user/IT professional so there isn’t much more to know.
- Great; that knowledge will stand you in good stead. However, conducting online research is another level of difficulty.
These services, and our accumulated know-how, need to be put into perspective when engaging with them as researchers. Broader sociocultural, political, and economic contexts have always informed research practices, and changes in research ethics; ICTs and the internet raise the ante in this respect in overt, and not so obvious ways. For instance many of the free products and services we take for granted in our everyday, professional, and research online lives are provided by corporations; where we go online, how we get there, and who owns, controls, or monitors these activities is an area in which corporations and governments alike have a keen interest. They are the object of huge R&D investments, hi-tech security measures, and marketing techniques, or where covert agencies use software applications that track internet traffic for financial gain.
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These trends have been a target for social mobilization as people become concerned about electronic privacy, data protection, internet censorship, and surveillance techniques. These issues are also objects of research and scholarly debate. In contrast to the internet of the previous decades, critical researchers have shown that web-based information and access to key services are becoming more complex by the minute in terms of ownership, control, and legal accountability. The point here is that whilst these services are intended to be user-friendly, their effective use for concerted research purposes is not self-explanatory.
Whatever your personal view of these matters, as researchers we need to bear them in mind. When designing an online research project in whole or in part, accessing an online community, conducting online surveys or email-based interviews, considerations about the practicalities and legalities of digital data-collection and data-storage are interconnected.