Big data? : qualitative approaches to digital research / Martin Hand, Sam Hillyard.

Includes bibliographical references.

Digital social research: potential and overview -- From cyberspace to the dataverse: trajectories in digital social research / Martin Hand -- Part I: Institutional mobilization and appropriations of data -- Politics, policy and privatisation in the everyday experience of big data in the NHS / Andrew Goffey, Lynne Pettinger and Ewen Speed -- Big data ambivalence: visions and risks in practice / Daniel Trottier -- Part II: Fields and sites -- The researcher and the never-ending field: reconsidering big data and digital ethnography / Christine Lohmeier -- Researching forums in online ethnography: practice and ethics / Emma Hutchinson -- Part III: Digital, digitized and participatory methods -- Marketing narratives: researching digital data, design and the in/visible consumer / Mariann Hardey -- Not being there: research at a distance with video, text and speech / Angus Bancroft, Martina Karels, Órla Meadhbh Murray and Jade Zimpfer -- $t Using software for qualitative data analysis: research outside paradigmatic boundaries / Jonathan Tummons -- Part IV: Visibilities, routines and practices -- Missed miracles and mythical connections: qualitative research, digital social science and big data / Robin James Smith -- Digitization and memory: researching practices and adaptation to visual and textual data in everyday life / Martin Hand -- Part V: Invisibilities, gaps, and ways of knowing -- 'Where no-one can hear you scream': an analysis of the potential of 'big data' for rural research in the British context / Sam Hillyard -- Investigating the other: considerations on multi species research / Nik Taylor and Lindsay Hamilton.

This volume seeks to address the emerging relationships between qualitative research and digital data. At the present time, ubiquitous digital data is altering the foci of research, the contexts in which research takes place, and the methods and tools available for qualitative research. Alongside new challenges and opportunities, there are many ways in which established qualitative methods are being used to situate and interpret digital phenomena. This book examines and engages with the ambivalence of digitization, illuminating the diverse ways in which researchers approach, negotiate, understand and interpret objects and practices of digital research. The chapters in this volume are organized around four key themes: researching impacts of digitization on social worlds; researching uses of digital data within social worlds; researching digital visualization of social worlds; researching with digital data and methods. The volume is designed to appeal to qualitative researchers seeking to study processes of digitization, adjust existing methodologies for digital worlds, and develop new ways of examining and using digital research.