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This chapter focuses on how to write research proposals for qualitative Internet research. It discusses the flexible adaptation of research plans in the face of emergent online events, and the diverse forms of fieldsite that can result. This chapter encompasses research designs involving documentary analysis, interviews, and ethnography, beginning with the problem of choosing a fieldsite. It examines the role of theoretical concepts in shaping research. It also covers the practices of data collection and storage required of the online qualitative researcher; the different forms of online presence and interaction in which they might engage; and the ethical concerns that various forms of Internet research design may raise.

This chapter focuses on how qualitative Internet research methods can effectively be presented in research write-ups. It first discusses the methods section of the research report. It then examines the core of the research report, focusing on styles of writing that interweave theory and data and develop an evocative account of the field. It also discusses concerns about anonymity and confidentiality that this richly data-focused style of writing about the Internet raises. The chapter explores the question of reflexivity and the specific role that it plays in qualitative writing about the Internet. It considers the temporal dimension of Internet research and looks at the ways in which the timing of events features in qualitative Internet writing. The chapter concludes with a summary of aspects to reflect on when developing a style for a research report.

This chapter tackles the topic of online research. It argues that social psychologists increasingly use the Internet to facilitate their studies and goes on to examine the prevalence of Internet-based research in top-tier social psychological journals and provides an overview of the growing body of research on best practices for Internet-based research. The chapter assesses general presentation guidelines for online questionnaires, how question response formats affect scale reliability, and strategies to improve the quality of responses from online participants. It includes a discussion of the considerations involved in populating online studies and general guidelines for ensuring the security of Internet-based data.

This last chapter provides a personal selection of texts for further study. It includes some general texts on qualitative research that are pertinent to Internet research. There are also texts here that related to Internet culture. It also identifies some online resources that may be of interest in developing qualitative Internet research skills.

Chapter 3 covered the standard research report and discussed ways of fitting digitally derived data into the traditional formats of qualitative research reports, according to established methodological principles. This chapter deals with more innovative ways of interpreting data and depicting Internet research for print formats and for various new media. It reviews some experiments in analyzing and presenting data in new ways, then moves on to new forms of writing. It concludes with a review of those factors promoting and constraining a move to these new research formats.

This chapter discusses the current status of qualitative Internet research in sociology and explores its future prospects. A section on the evaluation of Internet research suggests a series of questions to ask of Internet research studies, focusing on criteria conventionally used in judging qualitative research. The chapter then concludes with a consideration of the future prospects for qualitative Internet research.

This chapter presents the main topic of the study and the theoretical and methodological framework used in the book. First, it argues that, so far, the debate concerning blogs has tended to consider them as forms of diary, i.e. non-fiction while few scholars have looked at blogs as a new literary genre. In the Arab world, blogs have mainly been studied as tools for political activism, while some attention has been given to blogs turned into books. Therefore, the theory of ‘autofiction’ is introduced as a possible interpretative framework to understand the literary features of some blogs. Focusing on Arabic literature, the chapter shows that that although the term ‘autofiction’ was coined in France in 1970s, the practice of fictionalizing the self has a long tradition in Arabic literature. Finally, since Internet literature is a relatively new field of research, the chapter briefly illustrates the methodology and challenges adopted in this study, and in particular: the selection of primary sources; the benefits of combining close reading with interviews, and the researcher’s ethical stances concerning Internet material and interviews in time of a popular revolution and military censorship.

The hacking ethic and organizations such as Pirate Parties and Anonymous support the use of technical skill to bypass security and censorship. The Russian government has weaponized this ethic to use the Internet to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories, and to undermine trust in epistemological authority globally. This leads us to call this the Moscow Spoiler model, although many other countries, political actors, and non-state actors also use the tactic. Quasi-state agencies in Russia such as the Internet Research Agency and gangs such as the Night Wolves automate misinformation, while activists like WikiLeaks have been used in kompromat operations to reveal true but confidential information alongside misinformation. The Moscow Spoiler is not a vision for the Internet, but parasitical on a functioning Internet. The chapter also reviews progress and problems in the development and application of fact checkers.

Right-wing illiberal movements have enjoyed a run of political success. This manifests in Trump’s capture of the Republican Party and subsequent election; the number of illiberal, right-wing parties that hold or share power in Europe; and the largely right-wing coalition that successfully pushed for the UK to trigger withdrawal from the European Union—and thus sent one of the most stalwart, stable great-power supporters of liberal order and the American system into political chaos. This chapter explores how right-wing populism has emerged as a significant counter-order movement, and how the Kremlin has sought to position itself as a broker among wings of the transnational right. These movements also benefit from highly polarized societies, and piggyback on media environments that cultivate polarization. Because counter-order movements within the core are a major way that hegemonic systems collapse or international orders change, these developments matter to the fate of the American system.

Since the 1960s, a research tradition has developed that centers on studying structures and consequences of status differences in group interaction. Scholars from many countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Turkey, and the United States, have produced a substantial body of work developing and extending theories of status processes. Others draw on such theories to analyze natural settings and to intervene to produce desired outcomes in groups. Two theoretical concepts are key to this research tradition: status characteristics and expectation states. Both concepts need operational measures for empirical test and application. While researchers may employ ad hoc measures of status and expectations, comparability across studies and cumulative theoretical development both benefit from the use of shared or standard measurement operations. The authors review six alternate research designs for studying status and expectation states. They identify what is known about each, what remains to be determined, and how each design might be developed for greater usefulness in research conducted in this and related theoretical traditions.