Whether or not one believes the hyperbolic claims about the Internet being the biggest thing since the invention of the wheel, the Internet is a medium with great consequences for social and economic life. Doing Internet Research is written to help people discern in what ways it has commanded the public imagination, and the methodological issues that arise when one tries to study and understand the social processes occurring within the Internet. Each contributor to the volume offers original responses in the search for, and critique of, methods with which to study the Internet and the social, political, economic, artistic, communicative phenomena occurring within and around it. This book provides encouragement for readers getting started with Internet research and also provides perspective on this new and ubiquitous communication medium.

Whether motivated by curiosity or working on school reports, kids often use the Internet to do research. This helpful book covers everything from figuring out if a site is trustworthy to the importance of citing sources.

Internet Research Skills is a clear and concise guide to the effective use of the Internet for students in the social sciences. The open web is becoming central to student research practice, not least because of its accessibility, and this clear text describes search strategies and outlines the critical skills necessary to deal with such diverse and disorganized materials. This book covers all of the essential aspects of Internet research, with each chapter containing a number of illustrations, inset boxes, and short exercises.

Internet research spans many disciplines. From the computer or information s- ences, through engineering, and to social sciences, humanities and the arts, almost all of our disciplines have made contributions to internet research, whether in the effort to understand the effect of the internet on their area of study, or to investigate the social and political changes related to the internet, or to design and develop so- ware and hardware for the network. The possibility and extent of contributions of internet research vary across disciplines, as do the purposes, methods, and outcomes. Even the epistemological underpinnings differ widely. The internet, then, does not have a discipline of study for itself: It is a ?eld for research (Baym, 2005), an open environment that simultaneously supports many approaches and techniques not otherwise commensurable with each other. There are, of course, some inhibitions that limit explorations in this ?eld: research ethics, disciplinary conventions, local and national norms, customs, laws, borders, and so on. Yet these limits on the int- net as a ?eld for research have not prevented the rapid expansion and exploration of the internet. After nearly two decades of research and scholarship, the limits are a positive contribution, providing bases for discussion and interrogation of the contexts of our research, making internet research better for all. These ‘limits,’ challenges that constrain the theoretically limitless space for internet research, create boundaries that give de?nition to the ?eld and provide us with a particular topography that enables research and investigation.

This guide to the Internet has been revised to reflect the latestevelopments in Web technology and to bring readers up-to-date on techniquesor hunting down information in cyberspace. Rather than focusing ononnection and navigation, the book explains how to research specific subjectreas.;Providing information on using browsers, Newsgroups and Listservs, itovers researching for general, corporate, small business, finance, law,ournalism, academic, literature and the social and hard sciences. Individualhapters for national, big city and regional reporters are included, as wells detailed sections on specialized research, libraries, newspaper archives,aps and e-mail.

Drawing from interviews with Internet researchers from across the globe who work in diverse disciplines and in a wide array of online venues, this book examines ethical issues and questions that Internet researchers may encounter throughout the research process. Although the ethics of Internet research are complex, the aim of the book is to provide a rhetorical, case-based process to aid researchers in ethical decision making. In doing so, the book provides Internet researchers with useful resources and heuristics for engaging in ethical practices, interactions, and problem solving for their research.

A detailed look at conducting online research, including how to write literature reviews, utilize annotated bibliographies, and use Boolean logic.