Online Methods Flashcards
Internet for criminologists
- source of secondary data
- communication
- researching cybercrime
- source of primary data
Studying social practices online what and who
what can be studied?
* interactions, discourse, identities, digital life, experiences, practices
who can be studied?
* offenders, victims, risk groups, law enforcement, companies, ngo’s
Synchronous vs Asynchronous
**Synchronous ** events and processes in real time (chat, facetime)
**Asynchronous ** events and processes that do not occur in real time (e-mail, posting)
Online methods for quan vs qual
Quan online surveys, questionnaires, quasi-experiments
Qual online interviewing, online focus groups, digital ethnography, online social network analysis, discourse analysis
Pros of online interviewing
- large scope sample
- more response
- easier to recruit
- less work with transcript if per e-mail/chat
- less time consuming
- more anonymity
Cons of online interviewing
- less trust building
- more difficult to select respondents
- less verbal and non verbal stimuli
- less spontaneous
- platform bias
- shorter and less data
- more time consuming if via e-mail
- validity problems
Issues with text interview
- online vs offline identity
- lacking context
- textual listening
- various overlapping conservations
- miscommunications
- no body language
- easy for respondents to withdraw
Digital Ethnography
- Study of digital culture or community
- sometimes interested in the gap online/offline
- the use of active participation
Activities and strategies
Digital Ethnography
- setting up a website/blog - email exchange
- participation chat rooms - online/face to face interviews with moderators
Important aspects
Digital Ethnography
- register temporal structure of interaction
- important to register context from/links with real world
- obtrusive vs. unobtrusive
- ethical issues - anonimity, data security
Discourse analysis online
- personal, institutional websites - e-mails, posts
- documents, legislation - advertisements, games
- videos, sounds, pictures
Characteristics of websites
Intertextuality hypertext, links - print if possible the tree or structure
Fluidity change, disappear - report date, perios systematisation
Non-linearity fragments, no beginning or end
Reactivity dynamic changing content
Analysing websites
describe main menus and submenus
many websites - use a topic list to register data
save important pages
always identify nature/type/ source of content
internal search engines
use software for web crawling
