Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research

This volume offers a series of practical methods to study digital behaviours considering the socio-cultural realities of the global south. It includes methodologically rigorous applied research chapters from leading international researchers offering information on gold mines and blind spots in researching the digital in the global south. It develops a tri-sectional format based on distinct areas of research, geographical variability and diversity of methods and approaches. The first section focuses on Dissecting Research Fractures – which disrupts the established research ideologies and practices, user behaviors, theoretical perspectives, and field methods in the study of digital social research . The second section on Innovating Methods proposes and extends mixed methodologies that go beyond research boundaries to produce novel possibilities for study. The final section on Re-Imagining the Field breaks new ground in exploring the social-digital where a transient research field is contextualized and stabilized through the social, infrastructural, and digital interweaving. The book offers the reader an inside view of studying marginal yet emerging users and consumers of digital technologies. The three sections together purport to draw textual, graphical, temporal, and ethnographic insights via innovative and hybrid observational tools to record, annotate and formulate everyday experiences of digital life. The volume addresses scholars interested in hybridizing methods, early career researchers, and graduates working on connecting humans and digital technologies. It also holds considerable appeal for digital marketers and strategists, offering practically applicable methods to study digital life.