Summary

"Although written simply enough to be accessible to undergraduates, accomplished scholars are likely to appreciate it too. Reading it taught me quite a lot about a subject I thought I knew rather well."- Paul Vogt, Illinois State University"This book brings the art and science of building and applying innovative online research tools to students and faculty across the social sciences."- William H. Dutton, University of OxfordA comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of web Social Science. This book demonstrates how the web is being used to collect social research data, such as online surveys and interviews, as well as digital trace data from social media environments, such as Facebook and Twitter. It also illuminates how the advent of the web has led to traditional social science concepts and approaches being combined with those from other scientific disciplines, leading to new insights into social, political and economic behaviour.

Situating social sciences in the digital age, this book aids:

It is ideal for students and researchers across the social sciences, as well as those from information science, computer science and engineering who want to learn about how social scientists are thinking about and researching the web.

Choice Review

Ackland (Australian National Univ.) offers social science researchers both theory and methods for studying networks on the World Wide Web. The benefit--and the challenge--of this ambitious volume is that the author considers not only how Web data are providing new insights into existing social science research questions, but also how social science research can contribute to an understanding of life in the digital era. The audience for this book is, therefore, both social science researchers who want to use the Web as a means to study social phenomena, and those who would focus on the Web itself as a research object or milieu. This dual focus adds a level of complexity to the book that arguably reflects the reality of the role of the Web. Though this approach is thought provoking for theorists and experienced researchers, it also, unfortunately, encumbers the book's use as a methods handbook for novice researchers. Overall, Ackland has much to offer researchers seeking to conduct Web social science research: in both the methods section and a section composed of concrete, useful examples, he examines varied research designs, tools, and data types from diverse social science perspectives. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. A. I. Piper New College of Florida