Digital Social Research

By: Giuseppe A. Veltri

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Synopsis: To analyse social and behavioral phenomena in our digitalized world, it’s necessary to understand the main research opportunities and challenges specific to online and digital social research. This book presents an overview of the many techniques that are part of the fundamental toolbox of the digital social scientist. Placing online methods within the wider tradition of social research methods, Giuseppe Veltri discusses the methodological principles and related frameworks that underlie each technique of digital research. This useful guide covers methodological issues such as different digital data types, sampling for big data, construct validity, and representativeness. It looks at different forms of unobtrusive data collection methods (web scraping, social media mining) as well as obtrusive methods (qualitative methods, web surveys, and experiments). Special attention is given to three key analytical approaches, explored in more detail: computational approaches to statistical analysis, text mining, and network analysis. Digital Social Research Methods will be a welcome and essential resource for students and researchers across the social sciences and humanities carrying out digital research or interested in the future of social research.