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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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/