Qualitative Research and Hypermedia: Ethnography for the Digital Age (New Technologies for Social Research series)

Digital culture and digital technologies have rapidly become unavoidable and essential forms of social experience and communication in our emerging globalised society. If we want to attempt to analyse and understand our technology-saturated society, and all its new media, then we must also develop research methods and forms of analysis that can accommodate and exploit digital culture and digital technologies. This important new methods text sets out to equip qualitative researchers with the tools necessary to conduct ethnography in the age of email and the internet. It will investigate how digital technologies potentially transform the ways in which we do research. This text also introduces the reader to new emerging methods that utilise new technologies and explains how to conduct data collection, analysis and representation using new technologies and `hypermedia′. Essential reading for any student or researcher interested in qualitative research in an age of hypermedia, this text: - explains how digital technology impacts on social research; - investigates how digital technology has reshaped the field of social research; - consider the implications of bringing multimedia into the forefront of qualitative research; - suggests new ways of observing and documenting a `technologised′ and design-rich society; - enables the reader to use new technologies to handle and represent qualitative data; - unpacks the theoretical implications of writing and researching for the electronic screen Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction: Qualitative Research for the Digital World 10 Chapter 1 - Hypertext, Hypermedia and Qualitative Methods 15 Chapter 2 - Ethnographic Paradigms: Technologies and Representations 35 Chapter 3 - Hypertext Roots/Routes 52 Chapter 4 - Multi-semiotic Ethnography 77 Chapter 5 - The Hypermedia Toolbox 96 Chapter 6 - Hypermedia Fieldwork 124 Chapter 7 - Hypermedia Data Analysis 145 Chapter 8 - Hyper Representation 166 Notes 188 References 193 Filmography 203 List of hypertexts 204 List of software programs referred to in text 205 Index 206 In This Important Text, The Authors Present The Tools Qualitative Researchers Need To Conduct Ethnograpic Research In The Age Of E-mail And The Internet, Introducing Readers To Emerging Methods That Utilize New Technologies And Explaining How To Use These Technologies To Conduct Data Analysis. Bella Dicks ... [et Al.]. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [184]-193) And Index. Includes Web Resources And Filmography.