The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods

Online Research Methods are exploding in variety and importance. This new SAGE Handbook provides a much-needed comprehensive treatment of this dynamic and exciting field. From big data, semantic mining, AI, simulations, and visualizations to online focus groups,interviewing, ethnography, video-based research, and  much more besides, this volume has everything you need for a broad and deep exploration of the new world of research online.

In 2008 with the first and very successful edition of the Handbook, online research was characterized by its "newness" and by "caution". Today’s researchers are now “familiar" with online methods and "adept at their use", so the second edition of the Handbook has updated 27 chapters of the first edition and added nine chapters and two sections: "Digital Quantitative Analysis" and "Digital Text Analysis". Big data, gaming and participatory research are now also present. With a pragmatic focus on the current state-of-the-art, the new Handbook remains very attuned to the issues and challenges of online research and its methods.

Internet-based research methods is a diffuse and rapidly evolving area and this new edition of the Handbook of Online Research Methods provides a much needed overview and assessment of where it currently stands. As well as comprising some updated chapters, this new edition now includes chapters on many new areas, some of which were barely on the horizon when its predecessor was published. As such, this new edition provides much needed advice on the implementation of these methods and an appraisal of the state of the field. It will be invaluable to students and practitioners.

The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods, Second Edition”, edited by Nigel Fielding, Raymond Lee and Grant Blank, brings together several of the most noted scholars in the area of web and online survey methodology, along with the contributions of many younger researchers. The result is a compendium of information about online survey design, survey ethics, sampling and data capture, analysis of social network data, content analysis of digital text, online ethnography, and secondary analysis of online data, as well as essays relating online data to artificial intelligences, cartography, and diverse other topics. The authors are to be commended for an excellent update to their first edition, producing  volume of significant value to those interested in online research methods, social science, and social theory.

"The rapid growth of online communication technologies—social media, distributed internet use, and mobile devices
capable of recording and sharing information spontaneously—has expanded opportunities for researchers to collect and
use digital-born data. Keeping up with the methods for conducting studies in an online environment requires new ways of
thinking about the overall research process. This impressive handbook, written by an international team of scholars,
facilitates such conceptualization for both novice and experienced researchers...The handbook's focus on
the social sciences makes one wish for a similarly useful companion handbook examining online research methods
applicable to the humanities and performing arts."
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Beginning students through professionals/practitioners.