Current Issue
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Special issue 2012 Vol 7 (1) |
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Introduction to the Special Issue:
The Processes of Methodological Innovation Narrative Accounts and Reflections - Maria Xenitidou and Nigel Gilbert abstract |
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Innovation in online data collection for scientific research:
the Dutch MESS project - Marcel Das abstract |
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Ethics and interdisciplinarity in computational social science - Fabio Giglietto and Luca Rossi abstract |
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Marketing Netnography: Prom/ot(ulgat)ing a New Research Method - Robert V. Kozinets abstract |
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5. |
The Making of Water Cooler Logic’s Stakeholder Ethnography
Composting as a metaphor for innovation - Helga Wild abstract |
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6. |
A Method to My Madness: What Counts as Innovation in Social Science? - Mike Agar abstract |
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| Abstracts |
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| 1.The Processes of Methodological Innovation Narrative Accounts and Reflections - Maria Xenitidou and Nigel Gilbert |
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In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in methodological innovation and innovative methodologies in the social sciences. Driven by a wider, global impetus for innovation, discussions have centred on the use, application, diffusion and success of new methods. In the social sciences in particular, this upsurge of interest has been attributed to a need to respond to the complexities of the social world that has encouraged methodological, disciplinary and institutional interaction and cross-fertilisation. However, these discussions usually overlook the processes involved in methodological innovation and ignore their role in shaping innovative methodologies. This special issue aims to trigger discussion on the processes of methodological innovation in the social science community and beyond. |
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| 2. Innovation in online data collection for scientific research: the Dutch MESS project - Marcel Das |
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Not many long-running scientific studies in Europe or the United States use online panels. Leading scientific studies mostly use face-to-face or telephone interviews to collect data. However, Internet interviewing is cost-effective and offers various new possibilities for empirical research in the social sciences. In principle, one can measure new or complex concepts in much shorter time frames than is customary in more traditional survey research. Furthermore, the technology allows for, for example, experimentation, follow-up data collection, and respondents’ feedback.
Based on earlier experiences with an online scientific panel, an advanced data collection environment for the social sciences was proposed in the Netherlands: ‘An Advanced Multi-Disciplinary Facility for Measurement and Experimentation in the Social Sciences’ (MESS). The facility creates maximal opportunities for innovation, is fast, and freely accessible for everyone in the scientific community. The core of this facility is a representative panel of households that have agreed to be available for regular interviews over the Internet: the LISS (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences) panel. In addition to traditional questionnaire settings, the facility accommodates use of visual displays, preloading of data, and self-administered measurement of biomarkers. The project aims at integrating various fields of study, such as economics, social sciences, (bio)medical science and behavioral science.
Funding for the project was secured in 2006. This paper describes the needs to which the MESS project was responding and the process of setting up the facility. Attention will also be paid to |
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| 3. Ethics and interdisciplinarity in computational social science - Fabio Giglietto and Luca Rossi |
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During the last few years a growing amount of content produced by Internet users has become publicly available online. These data come from a variety of places, including popular social web services like Facebook and Twitter, consumer services like Amazon or weblogs.
The research opportunities opened up by this socio-technological innovation are, as shown by the growing literature on the topic, huge. At the same time new challenges for social scientists arise. In this paper we will focus on two of the main challenges posed to the growth of the so-called computational social science: interdisciplinarity and ethics. While the searchability and persistence of this information make it ideal for sociological research, a quantitative approach is still challenging because of the size and complexity of the data.
Collecting, storing and analyzing these data often require technical skills beyond the traditional curricula of social scientists. These projects require, in fact, collaboration with computer scientists. Nevertheless developing a common interdisciplinary project is often challenging because of the different backgrounds of the researchers.
At the same time the availability of this content poses a challenge concerning privacy and research ethics. Due to the amount of data and the fact that the real identity of the author is often hidden behind a nickname, it is often impossible to ask the subject involved to consent to the use of their data. On the other hand, especially in the first wave of web 2.0, this information has been - intentionally or not - publicly shared by the users. While a technique of dis-embedding the identity of the user from the content analyzed is often the solution used to bypass this issue, an even more important privacy-related challenge for computational social science is emerging. Due to the wide adoption of social network sites such Facebook or Google+, where a user may decide to share his content with his/her group of friends only, the amount of public data will change and decrease in the future. We will discuss this issue by enumerating a number of possible future scenarios. |
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| 4. Marketing Netnography: Prom/ot(ulgat)ing a New Research Method - Robert V. Kozinets |
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| This paper builds upon a core metaphor of scientific methodological diffusion as a specialized form of the marketing of ideas. Using as an illustrative the development and spread of netnography, online ethnography of social media data, this paper explores the nature of the creation, legitimation, adoption, and spread of a new scientific method. Viewing method diffusion as a type of marketing suggests a range of implications. Ideas about the method can be viewed, treated, and managed as a type of ‗brand‘. The method is not created in a vacuum but, like a marketed new product, is engineered to satisfy a particular scientific or investigative need, and its success depends on how well it satisfies that need. A particular ‗research-oriented segment‘ can be investigated, reached, and deliberately targeted. In this article, I explore how institutional waves of academic, geographic, and pragmatic target research audiences helped to reinforce the adoption of a new scientific approach. The method can be positioned intentionally in a particular methodological category, and as superior to other methods. Once the strategy for marketing the method is intact, the tactics for its spread can be introduced. The ideas for the method and methodology can be brought to their audience in a particular form, with particular attributes, through certain distribution or publication channels, promoted through various means, and offered through for a ‗price‘ that encapsulates the difficulty of adopting it. The article explores these ideas about the promulgation of a new method using the development of netnography as an extended case study example. |
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| 5. The Making of Water Cooler Logic’s Stakeholder Ethnography Composting as a metaphor for innovation - Helga Wild |
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This article traces the development of the Water Cooler Logic methodology and its most innovative feature, stakeholder ethnography, from within the conceptual setting of Silicon Valley in the nineties. I sketch a line of direct and indirect influences starting from computational ideas of intelligence, early corporate uses of ethnography, and new institutional forms to the Institute for Research on Learning’s commitment to a social view of learning and Water Cooler Logic’s action-oriented work with clients around their practical organizational concerns.
Building on and sometimes re-interpreting earlier achievements, Water Cooler Logic works at the boundary of university and industry, combining research and intervention in one seamless methodology. On the academic side, Water Cooler Logic views organizations as social networks and functional systems and relies on interdisciplinary teams to overcome the obstacles inherent in the distributed nature of knowledge and local institutional constraints. On its corporate side, it makes deliberative and pragmatic choices in selecting areas of concern and developing concrete, implementable solutions.
The Water Cooler Logic process offers stakeholders the opportunity to become reflective practitioners, para-ethnographers and change agents in their own organizations. At the same time it changes the role of the consultant to one who acts as mid-wife to the innovations emerging organically in the client organization. |
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| 6. A Method to My Madness: What Counts as Innovation in Social Science? - Mike Agar |
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| This article summarizes a presentation made to an ESRC-sponsored workshop on social science methodological innovation. First, the notion of methodological innovation is explored on the way to an argument that innovation in social sciences occurs at a conceptual level rather than at the level of techniques for data gathering. Four historical examples are briefly described to exemplify the argument: Zadeh’s fuzzy set theory, Goffman’s presentation of self, Bartlett’s schema, and Glaser and Strauss’ grounded theory. In response to questions posed by the organizers, it is noted that the four examples were produced by individuals with a considerable time lag before uptake of their concepts in the diffusion curve. The article ends with speculation on the possible nature of a social science center for conceptual innovation. |
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