Digital Methods in Media Research

Course goals

This course provides an introduction to digital research methods and ethics in internet research. Students will be introduced to various tools and techniques to collect and analyse natively digital data, while learning to be attentive to how this data is collected, treated and analysed.

By the end of this course, students will have developed:

• Introductory skills in digital methods research;
• An understanding of how to analyze “natively digital” or “born digital” materials;
• The ability to formulate and operationalize a relevant research question, select an appropriate method for that question, create and analyze a dataset, and maintain ethical awareness throughout;
• A nuanced view of the practicalities, limitations, and ethics involved in conducting internet research;
• The skills needed to set up a small research project that collects and analyzes online data using either manual techniques or online tools;
• The ability to write a research report that includes structured documentation of a research projects, based on one of the three units. The report will introduce a research question, explain how it will be operationalized, describe how the data was collected and treated, and analyze the findings. The report will also contain a short reflection on the tools (and their limitations) used for data collection and suggestions for further research.

Content

The transformation towards a datafied society offers the humanities an incredibly important opportunity to study culture and society (Van Es & Schäfer, 2017) and raises practical and ethical dilemmas pertaining to the collection and analysis of these data. This course provides an introduction to digital research techniques for studying digital culture and society with online data (Rogers, 2013; 2024). 

The main aim of the course is to introduce students to digital methods in media research by practicing to collect and analyse online data from digital platforms and services (i.e. social media platforms, mobile app stores, and web archives) for social and cultural research. 

Additional information