Digital Methods for Internet Studies: Concepts, Devices and Data
module description
From the module description (2026–2027):
Digital data from the web, online devices and social media platforms promise to provide unprecedented insights into social and cultural life. Yet many researchers and practitioners argue that the value of such data is limited if we cannot account for the role of digital devices and technologies in shaping and social and cultural life in particular ways. How can we make sense of links, likes and shares? How do platforms, algorithms, bots and AI play a role in mediating social and cultural phenomena? How can ‘born digital’ data be used to understand more about the interplay between digital technologies and digital cultures?
This module will provide a conceptual and practical introduction to digital methods for internet studies. Through a series of hands-on workshops students will work together to develop projects experimenting with digital methods to do research both with and about online devices and platforms. This is not just a practical, technical or computational task: online devices and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Github and Wikipedia play a role in both shaping social and cultural life, as well as enabling particular ways of knowing it.
Drawing on leading research in internet studies and associated fields, the module will explore how to study this ‘double aspect’ of online devices through creatively repurposing data associated with objects such as likes, shares, retweets, hashtags, links, search engines and web archives. Digital data has become important in organising and knowing many areas of life, including through social media analytics, marketing and big data sources which are said to complement more established forms of knowledge about society, such as statistics, polls, surveys, interviews and ethnography.
On the one hand, this module will show students how to critically reflect on the specific affordances of natively digital methods, devices and data, including through mixed-methods research. On the other hand, while platforms and devices come with certain ‘built in’ methods for knowing about society and culture, students will learn how to creatively repurpose data for analytical scenarios other than those intended, including through ‘critical analytics’ and ‘inventive methods’.
As well as understanding how to extract, repurpose and analyse data from a variety of online devices and platforms, the module will cover the use of visual outputs as a research technique. It will support students to collaboratively conceptualise, prototype, design and implement digital methods research projects which will be developed through collaborative workshops. As the proliferation of online devices and platforms continues to spark controversies and hybrid practices, this module will provide students with a solid grounding for making sense of these fast-changing developments in the contexts of both research and practice.
The module will take a “learning by doing” approach through group projects guided by module convenors. The assessment for this module is based on these group projects. This module will also use a flipped classroom model enabling active student learning by working on projects with instructor support and an accompanying package of materials. Materials to support flipped learning would typically include bespoke worksheets, video tutorials, “how-to” articles, datasets, tools, shared working spaces and forums for learning outside the classroom.