Exploring Online Research Methods | Key quotations

Exploring Online Research Methods | Key quotations: "Although online research holds promise, its potential should not be exaggerated: many of the issues and problems of conventional research still apply in the virtual venue.
(Madge and O'Connor, 2002)"

A number of other quotes are on the site as well.

We must ensure that cheap entry costs and glowing attractiveness of internet fieldwork do not result in shoddy 'cowboy' research.
(Dodd, 1998: 60)

While online methodological frameworks are in constant flux, change is not necessarily always progressive: there is a need for online researchers to practice their 'craft' with reflexivity.
(Madge and O'Connor, 2005)

1998 may well be remembered as the year web surveying 'took off!'. The yet to be answered question is how effectively future web surveys will be conducted and whether they will gain scientific acceptance.
(Dillman, Tortora and Bowker, 1998: 15)

Privacy is a more sensitive issue for internet surveys than for conventional survey media. The intimate relationship between respondents and their personal computers and between respondents and the online communities in which they participate create new privacy boundaries that are easily transgressed by researchers.
(Cho and LaRose, 1999: 428)

Attempting to undertake online data collection is far easier than successfully accomplishing it. For those who chose to perform it, they must do so deliberately and cautiously.
(Best and Krueger, 2004: 85)

Our final advice to the researcher who wants to implement an internet-based study is to engage in thorough planning and piloting.
(Hewson et al, 2003: 144)

While we believe that internet-mediated primary research has great potential, it is still in its infancy. The technologies and procedures need researching further.
(Hewson et al, 2003: 144)

Balancing the possibilities and pitfalls of internet data collection is neither simple nor straightforward. Scholars cannot merely adopt the practices of traditional communication modes, but must approach the internet as a unique medium that necessitates its own conventions.
(Best and Krueger, 2004: 1)

New technologies not only offer fresh opportunities for research but also impose new limitations.
(Christians and Chen, 2004: 18)

New media seem to offer the hope of reaching different populations of research subjects in new ways, but their promise is tinged with anxiety.
(Hine, 2005: 1)

In the moments of innovation and anxiety which surround the research methods there are opportunities for reflexivity. Seizing these moments for reflexivity depends, however, on not taking the radical capacities of the new technologies for granted, nor treating them as poor substitutes for a face-to-face gold standard.
(Hine, 2005: 9)

...most research on the internet is centred in Anglo-American cultural contexts.
(Jankowski and van Selm, 2005: 203)

At present for most internet researchers it is likely that gaining access is the least difficult aspect of the research process... What has become more difficult is determining how to ensure ethical use is made of texts, sounds and pictures that are accessed for study.
(Jones, 2004: 179)

Researchers must take care to note that there is no such thing as ‘the internet’, no single common experience of its use. Indeed, there is little that is convergent about the internet as a medium.
(Jones, 2004: 183)

Sensitivity is required in internet research for legal, practical and ethical reasons.
(Barnes, 2004: 219)

Online research is marked as a special category in which the institutionalised understandings of the ethics of research must be re-examined.
(Hine 2005: 5)

The online environment has created a new space for discussion, with the potential of involving people who may not otherwise be able to participate in research.
(Kralik et al, 2006 : 220)