Examines the impact of Internet technology on qualitative research methods. This book draws on studies using computer-mediated communication (CMC) and shows how online researchers can employ Internet-based qualitative methods to collect descriptive, contextually-situated data. It is intended as a guide for students and researchers.

Common themes in this volume include the centrality of the relationship between analytic perspectives and methodological issues, links between social science traditions, and the need to expand the paradigm of qualitative research.

A thoroughly revised & updated edition, this volume includes new chapters on auto-ethnography, critical race theory, queer theory, & testimonies.

Historically, social researchers have shown a willingness to exploit new technologies to enhance, facilitate and support their various activities. However, arguably no other technological development has influenced the landscape of social research as rapidly and fundamentally as the Internet. This collection avoids both uncritical embrace and wholesale dismissal by considering some of the key literature in the field of Internet research methods. Volume One: Core Issues, Debates and Controversies in Internet Research introduces themes and issues that run across all four volumes such as: epistemology, ontology and methodology in the online world; access, social divisions and the ′digital divide′; and the ethics of online research. Volume Two: Taking Research Online - Internet Survey and Sampling addresses the range of resources, digital archives and Internet-based data sources that exist online from relatively straightforward and practical guides to such material through to more polemical pieces which consider problems relating to the use, access and analysis of online data and resources. Volume Three: Taking Research Online - Qualitative Approaches considers the broad range of approaches to conducting researching via or ′in′ the Internet. The focus is on conventional methods that have been ′taken online′, and which in doing so, have become transformed in scope and character. Volume Four: Research ′On′ and ′In′ the Internet - Investigating the Online World follows logically from that which precedes it in exploring how social research has been ′taken online′, not simply through the deployment of existing methods and techniques via the Internet, but in researchers′ increasing recognition and investigation of the online world as a sphere of human interaction - a socio-cultural arena to be explored ′from the desktop′ as it were.

Corporate communication is an increasingly powerful strategic tool for connecting with a company's stakeholders. This book features contributions from leading international academics, combining a strong theoretical grounding and the latest research with a practical, managerial focus. Ideal for students and practitioners of corporate communications.

This popular text provides useful and pragmatic guidance for developing and successfully defending proposals for qualitative inquiry. The Fifth Edition addresses the advances and challenges presented by developments and new applications while providing direct guidance. Focusing on the proposal stage of research, this edition allows the reader to have a clear plan for data analysis and for the challenging varieties of final reports of qualitative inquiries. The new edition includes expanded coverage of ethics, analysis processes, and approaches, and is full of updated vignettes that illustrate the methodological challenges that face today's qualitative researcher. This edition also includes discussions about distance-based research (such as email interviews and online discussion groups), the implications of postmodern turns, integrating archival material in qualitative research, and creative ways of presenting the research. This text is an invaluable resource to teachers and students of research methods across disciplines and is a must for the library of those using qualitative approaches.