Online research

Many advocates of deliberative democracy see in the Internet a new opportunity for the development of public spaces, public spheres, and places where deliberation can take place. An important element of the notion of the public sphere in general and of deliberation specifically, is the quality of the debate. In the past decade, many studies have been conducted to evaluate online discussions in light of the ideal notion of the public sphere. However, a wide gap exists between theoretical approaches and the actual operationalization of such theories for empirical research. In an attempt to bridge this gap we develop a method for examining the extent to which Internet forums meet the normative requirements of rational-critical debate, reciprocity, and reflexivity. The methodological approach consists of a textual analysis of the contributions made to an online forum. The coding scheme presented in this article is based on a case study (UK Online) and guided by the theoretical notions of deliberative democracy.

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for those spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. However, past net-based public sphere research has focused mostly on political spaces thereby neglecting an array of other genres. The aim of this article is to move beyond politically oriented communicative spaces by investigating political talk within the British reality TV discussion forum Wife Swap. The purpose is to see whether a forum dedicated to reality TV provides the communicative space, content, and style for politics that extends the public sphere. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation. Moreover, the analysis moved beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressives influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings revealed that Wife Swap participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. Moreover, it was a space where the use of expressives played a key role in enhancing such talk.

The rise of digital technologies has the potential to open new directions in ethnography. Despite the ubiquity of these technologies, their infiltration into popular sociological research methods is still limited compared to the insatiable uptake of online scholarly research portals. This article argues that social researchers cannot afford to continue this trend. Building upon pioneering work in `digital ethnography', I critically examine the possibilities and problems of four new technologies — online questionnaires, digital video, social networking websites, and blogs — and their potential impacts on the research relationship. The article concludes that a balanced combination of physical and digital ethnography not only gives researchers a larger and more exciting array of methods, but also enables them to demarginalize the voice of respondents. However, access to these technologies remains stratified by class, race, and gender of both researchers and respondents.

Likert-type scales require individuals to choose between a limited number of choices, and have been criticized in the scholarly literature for causing loss of information, allowing the researcher to affect responses by determining the range, and being ordinal in nature. The use of online surveys allows for the easy implementation of continuous rating scales, which have a long history in psychophysical measurement but are rarely used in IS surveys. This type of measurement requires survey participants to express their opinion in a visual form. That not only solves the problems of information loss, but also allows for applying advanced robust statistical analyses. We use a real-world sample and a simulation to illustrate how noise impacts our data set. A noise level of 10% has only a small effect on both classical and robust estimates, but when 20% of noise is added, the classical estimators become severely distorted.

As online education continues to grow, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the nuances of online learning. However, to date, research on online learning has largely been characterized as being low quality. To increase the quality and promote rigor in online education research, researchers are beginning to argue for the importance of using mixed research. Yet, to date, very little mixed research has been conducted in the area of online learning. Further, the little “mixed” research that has been conducted suffers from a host of problems. Researchers need to be aware of the complexities of conducting mixed research and some of the issues that can be overlooked. This chapter focuses on some important steps and key considerations that researchers of online learning must make when conducting mixed research, in hopes to increase the rigor and quality of online learning research studies.

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for politically-orientated discussion forums, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. People talk politics just about anywhere online from reality TV discussion forums to numerous other forum genres. Thus, the need to tap into those discussions is important if our aim is to provide a more comprehensive overview of the online discursive landscape. However, widening our scope of analysis presents us with a new set of difficulties, namely, how do we identify political talk within the vast pool of threads and postings, and how do we assess such talk in light of the public sphere, while at the same time, taking into account its informal nature. The aim of this article is to tackle these questions by presenting a methodological approach, which attempts to detect, describe, and assess political talk in non-political discussion forums.

The relationship between White Power Rock (WPR) music scene and White Power Movement (WPM) is characterised by a combination of mutual dependence and support. Internet plays a critical role in the conservation and empowering of this relationship.
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the association between WPR music scene and WPM through the discourse expressed in the internet by the fans of WPR. The subject is first approached from a sociological perspective; it follows a historical retrospect of the British and Italian WPR music scene, from the „80s until today. Finally, we present the original findings of a research performed in four internet forums, two Greek and two Italian. The research was carried on from 1/8/10 to 10/12/10.
The methodology used for data collection was that of the “visitor”/observer. Data was analysed according to the following thematic topics: music, political ideology, nationalism and racism, homophobia and sexism, football partisan/followers, and the language used.
The main findings were: 1) Most music choices of all forum members are related to WPR. All forum members listening WPR belong to WPM. 2) In Italian forums, the variety of music choices shown by their members was larger than in Greek ones, while their knowledge of various music genders seemed to be higher. 3) The avatars and usernames of forum members emphasize significantly the loyalty of their holders to WPM, and they are representative of their political ideology. 4) Nationalism, racism and homophobia were evident in all forums studied. Sexism was observed mainly among football partisans/followers of a Greek forum, and, at a lower level or even not at all, in the Italian forums. 5) A strong association between partisanship (mainly football focused), neofascism and WPR was constantly observed in internet discussions that were analysed. 6) An interesting divergence concerning the level of quality of discussion was noticed: members of Greek forums were being using more often than not weak arguments while in the Italian forums a more influential political discourse was frequently applied.
In conclusion, we found in this thesis substantial evidence supporting the use of White Power Rock by members of selected Greek and Italian internet forums as a favourable occasion to manifest their political ideology and that WPR refers directly to White Power Movement.
Key words
autonomous nationalism • far right • fascism • homophobia • partisanship • music scene • neonazism • online research • political ideology • racism • sexism • subculture • White Power Movement • White Power Rock

This article outlines the research approach used in the international 1000 Voices Project. The 1000 Voices project is an interdisciplinary research and public awareness project that uses a customised online multimodal storytelling platform to explore the lives of people with disability internationally. Through the project, researchers and partners have encouraged diverse participants to select the modes of storytelling (e.g. images, text, videos and combinations thereof) that suit them best and to self-define what both ‘disability’ and ‘life story’ mean to them. The online reflective component of the approach encourages participants to organically and reflectively develop story events and revisions over time in ways that suit them and their emerging lives. This article provides a detailed summary of the project's theoretical and methodological development alongside suggestions for future development in social work and qualitative research.

Reflective tools have been gaining ground in educational research. Diaries, especially electronic ones, can be effective in enabling researchers to organise and reflect upon their research. Online diaries are flexible Web-based facilities since the recording process can be conducted quickly and smoothly. Here, I report on using Yahoo! Notepad as an online diary in my PhD study. This facility was kept right from the start to record all significant events and updates (e.g., contacts, resources, reminders, must-do tasks, notes, comments, procedures, scripts, and essential readings). This practice organised the research process by enabling me to: (1) organise work into relevant folders based on topic; (2) monitor my progress by, for example, reviewing the tasks I have accomplished, and the tasks remaining ahead; (3) save useful readings and textual resources for future reference on a regular basis; (4) create some preliminary drafts of the ideas I should tackle, and update these drafts when something new comes to my mind; and (5) create reminders to be reviewed on a weekly basis so that nothing is missed or forgotten. Some examples and illustrations are provided to help other researchers to understand the utility of this free online tool.

Doing research with People with Dementia (PwD) can be challenging given that disease symptoms of anxiety, forgetfulness, and fluctuating mental capacity can make recruitment and data collection difficult. Once COVID-19 made face-to-face data collection impractical, using internet-based methods became an alternative option to continue with research. However, data collection with PwD over the internet requires strategies to observe, support, and enable them to engage with research, especially with qualitative approaches. Nine articles were selected via a decade rapid scoping review (undertaken March-June 2020) to identify qualitative online methods used with PwD and associated challenges. Methods used were online interviews, clinical assessment/telemedicine, and textual analysis from blogs, forum posts, and Tweets created by PwD. Practical challenges identified: the researchers’ limited ability to manage the physical and social environment. Technical challenges identified: the need fo...

This paper addresses a high-stakes dispute over some six to eight months between two groups of community 'members' which led to official proceedings, social welfare investigations, psychological assessments, indications of a suicide risk and, unsurprisingly, extensive Ethics Committee involvement. The use of the word 'members' in inverted commas highlights the fact that many of the parties to the dispute resigned

Talking politics online is not bound to spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. The aim of this article is to move beyond such spaces by examining political talk within a space dedicated to popular culture. The purpose is to see whether a reality TV discussion forum provides both the communicative space, content, and style for politics that both extends the public sphere while moving beyond a conventional notion. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and deliberation. The analysis also moves beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressive speech acts interact and influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings indicate that nearly a quarter of the postings from the Big Brother sample were engaged in political talk, which was often deliberative in nature. It was a communicative space where the use of expressives both facilitated and impeded such talk.

Die fortgeschrittene, weiterhin fortschreitende und in immer mehr Bereichen alltäglich werdende Nutzung des Internets im Allgemeinen und des Word Wide Webs im Speziellen macht das Netz gleichermaßen für Wissenschaftler, Marktforscher und Demoskopen zu einem interessanten Medium. Für computergestützte selbstadministrierte Befragungen (CAWI, computer assisted web interviewing) und andere Datenerhebungsformen im Web steht eine Vielzahl von Möglichkeiten für den Einsatz qualitativer und quantitativer Verfahren zur Verfügung.

Ein Grund für diese Popularität liegt sicherlich darin, dass der selbstadministrierte Befragungsmodus, bei dem der Untersuchungsteilnehmer die Dateneingabe mit dem Beantworten selbst übernimmt, schnelle Untersuchungen großer Stichproben verspricht. Immer mehr (frei verfügbare) Software und Onlinetools für das Erstellen von Befragungen im Web und deren Auswertung, ermöglichen es auch technisch nicht versierten Personen, Daten im Netz zu erheben. Dabei wird scheinbar oftmals vergessen, dass sich Daten zwar leicht generieren lassen, sie jedoch über bestimmte Qualitäten verfügen müssen, sollen aus ihnen valide Schlüsse gezogen werden. Sowohl Qualität, als auch Quantität von Daten werden durch die gewählten Messmethoden beeinflusst.

Die beiden Haupteinflüsse auf die Qualität der Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung, Repräsentation und Messung (Überblick in Groves/Fowler/Couper 2004), haben für Datenerhebungen im Web ebenso ihre Gültigkeit, wie für andere Erhebungsarten. Während der Bereich der Repräsentation, also der Weg von der angestrebten Grundgesamtheit über die realisierte Stichprobe und weitere Einflüsse wie Antwortverweigerung, sich nicht grundsätzlich von anderen Arten der Datenerhebung unterscheidet, gibt es, durch das Medium Computer bedingt, einige Besonderheiten im Bereich der Messung. Während Konstruktvalidität und spätere Datenverarbeitung noch unabhängig von der Erhebungsart sind, gibt es spezifische Einflüsse auf den Fehler durch den Messvorgang, die einen Einfluss auf die Ausprägung des Wertes haben, der gemessen werden soll. Die hier vorgestellten Messinstrumente und Skalen werden vor allem hinsichtlich ihrer Wirkung auf den Messfehler dargestellt.

Die internetbasierte Datenerhebung ist zwar in der Lage, einige Schwierigkeiten papierbasierter Untersuchungen zu beheben (z. B. manuelle Dateneingabe; Bewertung von Stimuli, die sich nicht abdrucken lassen), manche Probleme treten jedoch in beiden Erhebungsmodi auf (Antwort nach sozialer Erwünschtheit; Effekte der graphischen Darstellung) und es kommen online neue Herausforderungen hinzu (Browserkompatibilität; Antworten durch automatische Skripte; Mehrfachteilnahmen). Aber es ergeben sich auch neue Möglichkeiten, die in Papier-und-Bleistift-Befragungen nicht oder nur mit einem erheblichen Aufwand (sehr große Teilnehmerzahl; Messung von Antwortzeiten; komplexe Filterführung; multimediale Stimuli; völlig freiwillige Teilnahme) zu realisieren sind.

Die folgenden zwei Abschnitte zur Nutzeridentifizierung und zum Kompatibilitätsproblem sind für die spätere Datenauswertung von entscheidender Bedeutung, da stets kontrollierbar sein sollte, welcher Nutzer welche Angaben unter welchen Bedingungen gemacht hat. Der anschließende Teil über Messmethoden fokussiert auf die technische Seite der Datenerhebung im Netz. Dort werden die Vielfältigkeit der computergestützten Messungen und der damit verbundenen Einfluss auf Datenqualität und -quantität vorgestellt. Der Abschnitt über webbasierte Skalen zeigt die große Bandbreite von reaktiven Erhebungsinstrumenten in selbstadministrierten Befragungen. Letztlich richten wir - exemplarisch für Innovationen der Datenerhebung im Internet - einen Blick auf dynamische Formulare, die neben neuen Möglichkeiten der Datenerhebung auch eine Fülle von methodischen Fragen mit sich bringen.

Ethnographers have long been concerned with how individuals and groups live out life in social spaces. As the Internet increasingly frames lived experiences, researchers need to consider how to integrate data from online spaces into “traditional” ethnographic research. Drawing from two ethnographic studies, we explain how online spaces were needed to more fully understand the physical environments and issues we studied. In addition to discussing how we were led online, we present ethnographic data to demonstrate the epistemological importance of considering online spaces. While traditional methods of ethnography (i.e., in-person observations and informal interviews) continue to be useful, researchers need to reconceptualize space as well as what counts as valuable interactions, and how existing (and new) tools can be used to collect data. We argue that studying a group of people in their “natural habitat” now includes their “online habitat.” We conclude with a call for ethnographers...

The Internet has continued to span great geographical space and generality interests. It has provided enough space for social interaction and information exchange. It is hard to imagine a world without the internet. Like other fields of human endeavours, the internet is no doubt revolutionising the act of researching, especially in the sciences. Regardless of any viewpoint, research outlines formal, methodical and rigorous processes, specifically the application of scientific methods of problem recognition, definition, solution development, data collection, analysis and conclusions. Expectedly, the introduction of the Internet heralded the upswing of the new soft form of learning; with the aim of achieving speedy and cost effective diffusion of knowledge. Secondly, the internet has also helped in aggregating with ease such knowledge which can be shared amongst geographically-detached partners. So, whether it involves fundamental/pure or basic distributed research, action, applied re...

The Internet has continued to span great geographical space and generality interests. It has provided enough space for social interaction and information exchange. It is hard to imagine a world without the internet. Like other fields of human endeavours, the internet is no doubt revolutionizing the act of researching, especially in the sciences. Regardless of any viewpoint, research outlines formal, methodical and rigorous processes, specifically the application of scientific methods of problem recognition, definition, solution development, data collection, analysis and conclusions. Expectedly, the introduction of the Internet heralded the upswing of the new soft form of learning; with the aim of achieving speedy and cost effective diffusion of knowledge. Secondly, the internet has also helped in aggregating with ease such knowledge which can be shared amongst geographically-detached partners. So, whether it involves fundamental/pure or basic distributed research, action, applied re...

The credibility of web sites is becoming an increasingly important area to understand. To expand knowledge in this domain, we conducted an online study that investigated how different elements of Web sites affect people’s perception of credibility. Over 1400 people participated in this study, both from the U.S. and Europe, evaluating 51 different Web site elements. The data showed which elements boost and which elements hurt perceptions of Web credibility. Through analysis we found these elements fell into one of seven factors. In order of impact, the five types of elements that increased credibility perceptions were “real-world feel, ” “ease of use, ” “expertise, ” “trustworthiness, ” and “tailoring. ” The two types of elements that hurt credibility were “commercial implications ” and “amateurism. ” This large-scale study lays the groundwork for further research into the elements that affect Web credibility. The results also suggest implications for designing credible Web sites.

This paper describes an experiment in teaching ethnographic techniques for applied research in consumer behaviour in on-line communities. The activity took place between March and June of 2007 and involved seven final year undergraduate Communications students. A brief contextualization precedes the report of the experiment, which took place in Second Life and was structured in four stages: (a) analysis of documentation; (b) participative observation; (c) semistructured questionnaires and (d) triangulation. Evaluation of the process seeks to identify benefits and drawbacks in the use of Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) for teaching in general and for the teaching of research techniques in particular. The conditions of access to Second Life in Brazil are also identified and discussed. Finally some possibilities for future teaching and research undertakings in online environments are presented.

Although Mechanical Turk has recently become popular among social scientists as a source of experimental data, doubts may linger about the quality of data provided by subjects recruited from online labor markets. We address these potential concerns by presenting new demographic data about the Mechanical Turk subject population, reviewing the strengths of Mechanical Turk relative to other online and offline

Abstract: Although Mechanical Turk has recently become popular among social scientists as a source of experimental data, doubts may linger about the quality of data provided by participants recruited from online labor markets. We address these potential concerns by presenting new demographic data about the Mechanical Turk subject population, reviewing the strengths of Mechanical Turk relative to other online and offline methods of recruiting participants, and comparing the magnitude of effects obtained using Mechanical Turk and ...

The Internet has continued to span great geographical space and generality interests. It has provided enough space for social interaction and information exchange. It is hard to imagine a world without the internet. Like other fields of human endeavours, the internet is no doubt revolutionising the act of researching, especially in the sciences. Regardless of any viewpoint, research outlines formal, methodical and rigorous processes, specifically the application of scientific methods of problem recognition, definition, solution development, data collection, analysis and conclusions. Expectedly, the introduction of the Internet heralded the upswing of the new soft form of learning; with the aim of achieving speedy and cost effective diffusion of knowledge. Secondly, the internet has also helped in aggregating with ease such knowledge which can be shared amongst geographically-detached partners. So, whether it involves fundamental/pure or basic distributed research, action, applied re...

Likert-type scales require individuals to choose between a limited number of choices, and have been criticized in the scholarly literature for causing loss of information, allowing the researcher to affect responses by determining the range, and being ordinal in nature. The use of online surveys allows for the easy implementation of continuous rating scales, which have a long history in psychophysical measurement but are rarely used in IS surveys. This type of measurement requires survey participants to express their opinion in a visual form. That not only solves the problems of information loss, but also allows for applying advanced robust statistical analyses. We use a real-world sample and a simulation to illustrate how noise impacts our data set. A noise level of 10% has only a small effect on both classical and robust estimates, but when 20% of noise is added, the classical estimators become severely distorted.

Wir stellen die Ergebnisse einer Meinungs- und Bedarfserhebung zu einem national geforderten Online-Labor fur die Forschung in Psychologie und verwandten Disziplinen vor. Ein solches Online-Labor sollte einen grosen Teilnehmerpool, Zugang zu und Schnittstellen mit Software zur Durchfuhrung Internet-gestutzter Studien, edukative Komponenten (Methodenberatung) sowie eine Anbindung an ein Datenarchiv zur Verfugung stellen. Die Meinungs- und Bedarfserhebung wurde unter wissenschaftlich tatigen Psychologen sowie anderen potenziell an einer solchen Forschungsinfrastruktur interessierten Forschenden durchgefuhrt. Uber 85 Prozent der Befragten unterstutzt ein solches Online-Labor.

Article presents nethnographic qualitative research report partially based on the research completed in 2017 as thesis at the Chair of Disability Studies, Faculty of Education Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. The research was conducted within 4 online open groups, organizational cultures of families with children, youth or adults with disabilities who are participating in social media in Poland. The primary focus of the research was the law and legal issues’ perception by families. However, in this paper we refer to wider aspects of general online activities undertaken by the members of researched 4 groups, that in fact form online organizational disability cultures. Presented results of analysis contain categories as: basic cultural artifacts (material and symbolic), values of 4 analyzed groups and underlying assumptions, according to the model of organizational culture by Edgar H. Schein (2010). Furthermore we discuss the general activities of participants in th...

Seeking to enhance student interactivity and provide real-time feedback in the area of medical informatics, the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library developed a series of interactive blogs and clickers. This poster presents the methods and results of using blogs and clickers to increase students' interest in the field of medical informatics.