Tuesday 9 September 2014 1NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

Digital Methods as Mainstream Methodology?

Helene Snee, Manchester Metropolitan University

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

2

Network aims

• Inspire use of relevant, effective, innovative digital methods

• Identify future training needs

• Foster networks for sharing of expertise

• Provide networking and dissemination opportunities through series of events

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

3

Key issues

• Supporting innovation, collaborative and interdisciplinary work (especially early career researchers)

• Importance of critical reflection on digital tools and methods– Defining digital methods, defining the mainstream

– Context, populations, participants

– “Big data” (thick data? wide data?)

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

4

Key issues

• Challenges of access to data and data handling

• Overcoming barriers to dissemination

• Ensuring ethical research

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

5

Case studies

• Sentiment analysis of Twitter

• Virtual notebooks for transdisciplinary research

• Understanding the cultural logic of young people’s everyday practices

• Using digital and traditional methods to access hidden populations

• Consequences of using personal Facebook profile as a research tool

• Digital tools for reflecting on practice-based research

• Collaborative and democratic opportunities of the semantic web

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

6

Looking to the future

• Significance of the digital– Digital methods crucial opportunity for social sciences

• Productive to disseminate in ‘mainstream’ conference streams, journals

• Barriers to publication

• Potential for innovation by interdisciplinary collaboration– Funding mechanisms to support

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

7

Looking to the future

• Institutionalisation ongoing but not complete– Peer review

– Ethical standards

• Critical engagement with distinctions:– Mainstream / marginal

– Digital / conventional

Tuesday 9 September 2014 NEMODE Professional Development Workshop, BAM Conference, Belfast

8

Final thoughts

• Interdisciplinarity – both within and beyond the social sciences

• Spaces for discussion and debate important, especially for PhD and early career researchers in dialogue with established scholars

• Questions of epistemology and ethics of ongoing concern

• Website: http://digitalmethodsnmi.wordpress.com/

• Discussion paper: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3156/