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Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age
An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital age
The rapid spread of social media, smartphones, and other digital wonders enables us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable, offering entirely new approaches to core questions about social behavior. Bit by Bit is the key to unlocking these powerful methods. In this authoritative and accessible book, Matthew Salganik explains how the digital revolution is transforming the way social scientists observe behavior, ask questions, run experiments, and engage in mass collaborations. Featuring a wealth of real-world examples and invaluable advice on how to tackle the thorniest ethical challenges, Bit by Bit is the essential guide to doing social research in this fast-evolving digital age.
The rapid spread of social media, smartphones, and other digital wonders enables us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable, offering entirely new approaches to core questions about social behavior. Bit by Bit is the key to unlocking these powerful methods. In this authoritative and accessible book, Matthew Salganik explains how the digital revolution is transforming the way social scientists observe behavior, ask questions, run experiments, and engage in mass collaborations. Featuring a wealth of real-world examples and invaluable advice on how to tackle the thorniest ethical challenges, Bit by Bit is the essential guide to doing social research in this fast-evolving digital age.
448 pages, Paperback
Published August 6, 2019
51 people are currently reading
791 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 4, 2024
If you are in the social sciences and just started learning computational methods (or the other way around), this is the book you'll turn to when you need to find the right references or starting points.
October 4, 2019
Apart from the specific informations that are enclosed within this book related to running experiments, and Big Data, what caught my attention in addition to the infinite possibilities of re-purposing data, was ethics in digital social research (Computational Social Science).
There's a clear horizon where “Ethics will move from a peripheral concern to a central concern and therefore will become a topic of research.”... and the author formulated a preliminary guide for that purpose : “Four principles that can guide researchers facing ethical uncertainty are: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, Justice, and Respect for Law and Public Interest.”
And while you might think that the main sources of Big Data are online, it seems that “Corporate big data sources are about more than just online behaviour + Data generated by government administrative records, tax records, school records, and vital statistics records.”...
One other important feature about CSS, is to be able to come up with a good research design :
“The best way to create this powerful hybrid is not to focus on abstract social theory or fancy machine learning. The best place to start is research design. If you think of social research as the process of asking and answering questions about human behavior, then research design is the connective tissue; research design links questions and answers. Getting this connection right is the key to producing convincing research.”
There's a clear horizon where “Ethics will move from a peripheral concern to a central concern and therefore will become a topic of research.”... and the author formulated a preliminary guide for that purpose : “Four principles that can guide researchers facing ethical uncertainty are: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, Justice, and Respect for Law and Public Interest.”
And while you might think that the main sources of Big Data are online, it seems that “Corporate big data sources are about more than just online behaviour + Data generated by government administrative records, tax records, school records, and vital statistics records.”...
One other important feature about CSS, is to be able to come up with a good research design :
“The best way to create this powerful hybrid is not to focus on abstract social theory or fancy machine learning. The best place to start is research design. If you think of social research as the process of asking and answering questions about human behavior, then research design is the connective tissue; research design links questions and answers. Getting this connection right is the key to producing convincing research.”
September 27, 2021
Bit by Bit provides an updated view on how to conduct social science research using digitally collected data. The book covers observation, experiments, surveys, gamification, and much more. This was one of the best research methods books I’ve read. I work with these tools already and it still led me to new ideas and understandings of what is possible. Each chapter provides an extensive what to do next section along with suggested exercises.
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May 27, 2024Verplichte kost om te lezen voor een Summer School die ik ga volgen, maar omdat het wegleest als een van de "betere" non-fictieboeken, dump ik het ook even op Goodreads. Over de kansen en uitdagingen van big data en data science. Waarom data enerzijds supertof zijn, maar anderzijds beperkt. Zeker verhelderend!
August 29, 2021
This is an excellent introduction to social science research using big data and experimental design. Would be a great text for an introductory course. It has a really great discussion of research ethics. Thanks, Matthew!
February 2, 2019
Well written and easy to read. This was really interesting, in particular as a data scientist working more and more with social scientists.
April 13, 2020
A very clear and enjoyable style of writing
September 14, 2023
Clear, organized, inspiring, and packed with useful references of all kinds - articles, books, methods-based, applied.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews