Internet Research as Emergent Practice

The paper explores the emergence of research designs and techniques in the face of the recent development and growth in social significance of the Internet. While covering a number of different research traditions, it focuses particularly on the applications of ethnography to the Internet. I first describe the establishment of Internet research as a distinctive field of inquiry before exploring some ways in which the perceived novelty of the Internet has provided the occasion for new research practices to emerge. Various ways in which researchers have adapted their methods to accommodate the social phenomena that they experience on the Internet are described; ultimately, however, most methodological solutions are strongly in dialogue with conventional approaches. The paper thus concludes with an assessment of the extent to which Internet research methods can appropriately be characterized as innovative.