Description
Doing research is an ever-changing challenge for social scientists. This challenge is harder than ever today as current societies are changing quickly and in many, sometimes conflicting, directions. Social phenomena, personal interactions, and formal and informal relationships are becoming more borderless and disconnected from the anchors of the offline “reality.” These dynamics are heavily marking our time and are suggesting evolutionary challenges in the ways we know, interpret, and analyze the world. Internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is being incorporated into every aspect of daily life, and social life has been deeply penetrated by the internet. This is due to recent technological developments that increase the scope and range of online social spaces and the forms and time of participation such as Web 2.0, which widened the opportunities for user-generated content, the emergence of an “internet of things,” and of ubiquitous mobile devices that make it possible to always be connected. This implies an adjustment to epistemological and methodological stances for conducting social research and an adaption of traditional social research methods to the specificities of online interactions in the digital society.
The Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society covers the different strands of methods most affected by the change in a digital society and develops a broader theoretical reflection on the future of social research in its challenge to always be fitting, suitable, adaptable, and pertinent to the society to be studied. The chapters are geared towards unlocking the future frontiers and potential for social research in the digital society. They include theoretical, epistemological, and ontological reflections about the digital research methods as well as innovative methods and tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data. This book is ideal for social scientists, practitioners, librarians, researchers, academicians, and students interested in social research methodology and its developments in the digital scenario.
Author's/Editor's Biography
Gabriella Punziano (Ed.)
Gabriella Punziano, PhD in Sociology and Social Research, is Assistant Professor in Sociology and Methodology, Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II where she teaches New data and new methods for communication analysis and Software for qualitative and quantitative analysis. Her research interests include: the methodology of social research, the new analytical frontiers and the challenges introduced by new data, mixed and integrated and digital perspectives; social policies and welfare regimes in relation to social inclusion, territorial cohesion and community integration; the analysis of public, institutional and political communication phenomena through innovative content analysis techniques; risk communication analysis on social and digital platforms; socioeconomic effects, individual behavior, risk governance, communication of science, and the role of expertise in the Covid-19 era.
Angela Delli Paoli (Ed.)
Angela Delli Paoli graduated cum laude in 2005 with a master degree in Communication and a thesis in Social Research Methods at the University of Salerno (Italy). She received her Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2010 from the Second University of Naples (Italy). She was visiting researcher at the London Business School (UK) in 2008. She held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the University of Salerno (Italy) from 2010 to 2017. She was Adjunct Professor of “Social Research Methods” and “Sociology” at the University of Salerno and of “Research Methods in Scientific Research” at the Second University of Naples. Now, she is Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities, Philosophy and Education (University of Salerno). Author of monographic studies, several essays, book chapters and articles published in national and international academic journals, she has also teaching experience at both undergraduate, postgraduate and master levels. She participated as senior researcher and expert evaluator in several European (Horizon 2020 interim evaluation, Eurofound expert groups), national (INVALSI; Youth Department, etc.), and regional expert groups. She acts also as independent evaluator for the European Commission General Directorate for Research and Innovation and the European Commission Research Executive Agency (REA). Her current research interests are qualitative and quantitative social research methods; epistemology, online research methods, big data, netnography.