The transcription of verbal and non-verbal social interactions is a central feature of social research and remains one of the most labour intensive and time consuming parts of many research projects. In this post Daniela Duca explores how the automation of transcription has become standard practice in other industries, such as news media, and considers what this might mean for […]
Mobile phone applications, Apps, have become a common feature of day to day life. However, their application to social research is only beginning to be experimented with and understood. In this post Wasim Ahmed, discusses The Rainy Day Project, a research project that from the outset was designed to employ an app and considers the how the inclusion of […]
Research impact is often equated with the way in which research articles are cited and used by other researchers and non-academics. An often less appreciated aspect of research impact is the impact that the ideas contained within research papers and books have when used to teach students. In this re-post Anne-Wil Harzing presents the The Open Syllabus Explorer, an online tool […]
Smartphones have become a key medium through which information of all kinds is accessed. Even a small, but significant, amount of traffic to academic journals derives from smartphones. Their increasing popularity and power, have led some to argue they have an important role to play in maintaining an informed public. However, Johanna Dunaway and Stuart Soroka argue that the […]
In this post Dr Reka Solymosi & Dr Michael Chataway discuss the use of mobile phone applications as a research method in the social sciences. Reflecting on their own use of apps to study fear of crime, they highlight the methodological advantages of incorporating apps into research designs and provide four key points to consider for researchers seeking to […]
Type vaccines into twitter and under a new initiative you will be prompted towards information supplied by expert institutions such as the NHS or US Department of Health and Human Services. However, by directing audiences to these sources, do social media companies overlook the important role played by online communities of lay experts? In this post Stefania Vicari explores […]
An increasingly large share of human activity now takes place in online digital environments. However social researchers are predominantly trained to investigate and interpret a pre-digital world. In this post Mark Carrigan and Phil Brooker argue that social researchers need to increasingly engage with code and coding in order to understand contemporary society. As one step in this direction […]
Different social media platforms allow different levels of access to the data they hold for academic research. In this cross-post Daniela Duca explores some of the ways in which LinkedIn has been used by social scientists and provides a list resources for researchers looking to work with LinkedIn data.
Back in 2012, when LinkedIn was close to the 200 million users […]
Twitter and other social media platforms represent a large and largely untapped resource for social data and evidence. In this post, Wasim Ahmed updates his recurring series on the Impact Blog, to bring you the latest developments in digital methods and methodologies for researching Twitter and other social media platforms.
This post builds upon the 2015, and 2017 editions of […]
In Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Safiya Umoja Noble draws on her research into algorithms and bias to show how online search results are far from neutral, but instead replicate and reinforce racist and sexist beliefs that reverberate in the societies in which search engines operate. This timely and important book sheds light on the ways that […]
In this post Shalini Kurapati introduces the concept of data stewarding. Drawing on her own experience, she describes how data stewarding has developed an important role in delivering open science and research in higher education and research institutions and discusses how data stewarding also presents an important opportunity for post-doctoral researchers to develop careers within and beyond academia.
Like most […]
In this post, Gal Oestreicher-Singer, Hilah Geva, and Maytal Saar-Tsechansky, discuss the extent to which users of twitter use the platform in order to diversify their identities, or to maintain ‘on message’ branded identities. Presenting a novel methodology, their findings suggest that twitter has become a tool for targeted self promotion, behaviour that is especially prevalent in professional bloggers.
More […]
The internet is a challenging environment for those looking to engage in enlightened public discourse. In this repost, Fabio Sabatini and Tommaso Reggiani present evidence showing how, although incivility has become the default setting for online conversations, where debate is civil it has a corresponding effect on levels of trust. Suggesting that an appropriate policy response to the incivility of […]
Altmetrics – web-based measures of research usage – have existed for a decade. However, a significant proportion of social science research fails to register any online attention at all. This impairs the usefulness of altmetrics as a tool to understand the relevance of social science research and also suggests social researchers are less inclined to engage in online arenas. […]
Open Access to research findings is often presented as an end unto itself. However, the ethos of open access, to enable a greater sharing and utilisation of research knowledge, suggests a more complex network of scholarly communication. Presenting the findings of a recent report on the development of Open Access, Daniel Hook explores how the open trajectories of the […]
The revolutionary potential of blockchain has been much touted in many fields including research and higher education. In this post, Martin Hamilton discusses some of the potential applications of blockchain to academia and raises key questions about how these systems could be implemented and safeguarded from malicious exploitation.
Blockchains are all the rage right now. They’ve joined cloud computing, big […]
Andreas Pacher presents the Observatory of International Research (OOIR), a research tool that provides users with easy to use overviews and information for whole fields of social science research. Reflecting on the advantages and limitations of other discovery tools and the potential for information overload, Andreas points to the utility of OOIR in producing search results that are both […]
Recommendations on how to better support researchers in good data management and sharing practices are typically focused on developing new tools or improving infrastructure. Yet research shows the most common obstacles are actually cultural, not technological. Marta Teperek and Alastair Dunning outline how appointing data stewards and data champions can be key to improving research data management through positive cultural change.
This […]
Metadata 2020 is a collaboration of scholarly communications stakeholders working towards richer, connected, reusable, and open metadata for all research outputs. Clare Dean explains what the collaboration’s goals are, what common problems and opportunities for progress have already been identified, and how these are being addressed by six main projects. These include improved communications with researchers on the importance […]
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Rethinking the rights of children for the Internet Age
Rethinking the rights of children for the Internet Age
The internet is now 30 years old, making it the same age as the key formulation of children’s rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the intervening years, our understanding of the transformative effects of the internet on both society and children have developed in tandem. In this post Sonia Livingstone outlines some of the […]