A resource for social scientists on how Twitter data can be used to study individual behavior and social interaction.

The book investigates political re/tweets that reveal the nature and patterns of politics and digital political revolution in India. The re/tweets are made by Indian politicians at various capacities in order to communicate to followers, which shaped the political discourse in form of response, activism, and technology. The book is based on interdisciplinary approaches wherein geography interfaces with political, cultural, social, economic and social media studies. The book is mapping patterns of spatial politics through Twitter which revolutionized the digital politics in India. It discusses and answers the questions: Why do politicians use Twitter and other social networking sites? When do politicians make re/tweets? Is Twitter all about official? The book triggers questions about the politics of gadgets. To what extent are politics inseparable from re/tweets? The book adheres the inevitable role of technology, particularly of Twitter in day-to-day spatial reporting in the shape of politics, culture, identity, ideology, norms and empiricism. This book is the result of the research project “Mapping Political Tweets: The Digital Political Revolution in India” (2015–16), funded by Kalindi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi. KC/GB/3349(a). The book appeals to research scientists, graduate students and practitioners in the fields of political science, media representation, communication, and those who have interests to investigate the linkages between different parts of geography and social science with communication technology.

This book offers a spatial insights on the social mediasphere in the context of digital shutdowns and reflects the dimensions of political economy and of social media in general. Internet shutdowns have been found to be more prevalent in developing countries than in developed countries, with India leading in Internet shutdowns in the world. Internet shutdowns have occurred in India for several reasons, mainly to hinder the spreading of information through social media – this is discussed in detail along with political motives behind this and how this can conflict with government policies, such as the flagship program “Digital India” which is ostensibly meant to improve the infrastructure and expansion of digital information throughout the country. This book suggests new dimensions in the digital spatiality. Furthermore, the digital space is defined and discussed, including its role and how this might be reflected in concepts around spatiality and spaces. More concretely, the book considers the following questions: How is social media reflected in spatial sciences? How does the space differ from more tangible spaces, such as the hydrosphere or atmosphere? How do (computer/mobile phone) screens behave as a space/place in the context of behavioural sciences? How is this reflected in what is shaping and reshaping the spatiality of digital gadgets? Do digital gadgets change the socialization process that’s often considered a path towards how we develop in society? How do internet shutdowns affect the political economy and what patterns can be seen in how individuals, companies and the internet industry in particular react to these shutdowns in India?

This volume focuses on the ethics of internet and social networking research, exploring the ethical challenges faced by researchers making use of social media and big data in their research.

"Abernathy provides a truly accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to geodata and geolocation covering both the conceptual and the practical. It is a must read for students or researchers looking to make the most of the spatial elements of their data" - Luke Sloan, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods, Cardiff University Using Geodata and Geolocation in the Social Sciences: Mapping our Connected World provides an engaging and accessible introduction to the Geoweb with clear, step-by-step guides for: Capturing Geodata from sources including GPS, sensor networks and Twitter Visualizing Geodata using programmes including QGIS, GRASS and R Featuring colour images, practical exercises walking you through using data sources, and a companion website packed with resources, this book is the perfect guide for students and teachers looking to incorporate location-based data into their social science research.

This book provides practical information about web archives, offers inspiring examples for web archivists, raises new challenges, and shares recent research results about access methods to explore information from the past preserved by web archives. The book is structured in six parts. Part 1 advocates for the importance of web archives to preserve our collective memory in the digital era, demonstrates the problem of web ephemera and shows how web archiving activities have been trying to address this challenge. Part 2 then focuses on different strategies for selecting web content to be preserved and on the media types that different web archives host. It provides an overview of efforts to address the preservation of web content as well as smaller-scale but high-quality collections of social media or audiovisual content. Next, Part 3 presents examples of initiatives to improve access to archived web information and provides an overview of access mechanisms for web archives designed to be used by humans or automatically accessed by machines. Part 4 presents research use cases for web archives. It also discusses how to engage more researchers in exploiting web archives and provides inspiring research studies performed using the exploration of web archives. Subsequently, Part 5 demonstrates that web archives should become crucial infrastructures for modern connected societies. It makes the case for developing web archives as research infrastructures and presents several inspiring examples of added-value services built on web archives. Lastly, Part 6 reflects on the evolution of the web and the sustainability of web archiving activities. It debates the requirements and challenges for web archives if they are to assume the responsibility of being societal infrastructures that enable the preservation of memory. This book targets academics and advanced professionals in a broad range of research areas such as digital humanities, social sciences, history, media studies and information or computer science. It also aims to fill the need for a scholarly overview to support lecturers who would like to introduce web archiving into their courses by offering an initial reference for students.

Digital work has become increasingly common, taking a wide variety of forms including working from home, mobile work, gig work, crowdsourcing, and online volunteering. It is organizationally, interpretively, spatially, and temporally complex. An array of innovative methodologies have begun to emerge to capture this complexity, whether through re-purposing existing tools, devising entirely novel methods, or mixing old and new. This volume brings together some of these techniques in an accessible sourcebook for management, business, organizational, and work researchers. It presents a range of innovative methods which capture and analyse digitally-related work practices through reflexive accounts of real-world research projects, and elucidates the range of challenges such methods may raise for research practice. It outlines debates and recommendations, and provides further reading and information to support research practice. The book is organised in four sections that reflect different areas of focus and methodological approaches: working with screens; digital working practices; distributed work and organizing; and digital traces of work. It then concludes by reflecting on the methodological issues, research ethics, requisite skills, and future of research given the intensification of digital work during a global pandemic that has impacted all aspects of our lives.