Goldsmiths - University of London

Marres, Noortje. 2011. Re-distributing methods: digital social research as participatory research. Sociological Review.

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Abstract or Description

This paper seeks to contribute to debates about digital social research by proposing that digital methods enable a distinctive mode of critical intervention in online research spaces. The paper begins by identifying several broad problematics associated with the digitization of social research: the displacement of research capacities away from academic social science, and the rise to prominence of popularity metrics in online research. It proposes that this second problematic implies the resurgence of a classic concern of social and political thought, with the ‘tyranny of reputation.’ In examining how this problematic plays itself out in the digital context, this paper suggest that we may built on previous attempts in sociology to address it, most notably the development of ‘post-social methods.’ The paper goes on to situate this project in relation to four different types of responses to the digitization of social methods: methods-as-usual, big methods, virtual methods and digital methods. The paper takes up the last proposition, but argues that, contrary to the initial framing of digital methods, there may be milage in focusing on the re-mediation of existing social methods in digital environments. It discusses two online tools for social research, Issue Crawler and a second online application for issue analysis currently under development. It shows how these tools re-mediate not only specific methods of network and textual analysis, but also specific methodology critiques. The paper then takes up the STS concept of the ‘re-distribution of methods’ and adapts it to account for this digital form of methodology critique. This concept suggests that the enactment of social research methods involves a range of agencies and agents inside and outside academic research, and, as such, it enables us to acknowledge that digital methods are participatory methods of sorts, and to make more of this fact.

Available Versions of this Item

• Re-distributing methods: digital social research as participatory research. (deposited 24 Oct 2011 09:36)[Currently Displayed]
  • Re-distributing methods: digital social research as participatory research. (deposited 16 Apr 2012 16:37)

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