Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net

The Internet is a medium with great consequences for social and economic life. This book is written to help people discern in what ways it has commanded the public imagination, and the methodological issues that arise when one tries to study and understand the social processes occurring within it. The contributors offer original responses in the search for, and critique of, methods with which to study the Internet and the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within and around it.

The Internet is a medium with great consequences for social and economic life. This book is written to help people discern in what ways it has commanded the public imagination, and the methodological issues that arise when one tries to study and understand the social processes occurring within it. The contributors offer original responses in the search for, and critique of, methods with which to study the Internet and the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within and around it.

Booknews

Thirteen studies question the wisdom of using the existing arsenal of research methods and theories in the study of the social, political, economic, artistic, and communicative phenomena occurring within and around the Internet. Coverage includes the use of interactive features to help generate a more accurate picture of a site's audience; the differences between traditional texts and the WWW text; the ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the Internet; the study of social relations in cyberspace; and foundations and goals of computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Steve Jones is professor and head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is author/editor of numerous books, including Doing Internet Research, The Encyclopedia of New Media, CyberSociety, and Virtual Culture. He is co-founder and president of the Association of Internet Researchers and co-editor of New Media & Society, an international journal of research on new media, technology, and culture. He also edits New Media Cultures, a series of books on culture and technology for Sage Publications, and Digital Formations, a series of books on new media for Peter Lang Publishers.