International workshop 'Research methods in the digitally networked information age'

The workshop was convened as a part of a transatlantic research co-operation. The mission for the workshop was to gain a deeper conceptual and practical understanding of the promises and limitations of research methods – and the interplay among them – aimed at fostering knowledge in the digitally networked information age. The workshop commenced on May 10 with a late-afternoon session that included introductions of participants and a framing of the inquiry. The following days, the invited group of experts from different disciplines were asked to address and assess the promise of and limitations on a core set of methodological approaches that can be used to study complex research questions in the digitally networked information environment, and to discuss lessons learned and future trajectories.

The workshop was based on the working hypothesis that the digitally networked information environment – symbolically represented by the “Internet” – poses both a number of distinct methodological challenges as well as a series of new opportunities, including the potential of a more holistic methodological repertoire.

The discussion was structured along three different segments.

In a first step (“taking stock”): exploring the ways in which the methodological repertoire of disciplines such as social science, ethnography, law, communication science, and economics has been applied to study the current information ecosystem in general and the Internet in particular. In a second step (“evaluation and reflection”): how these methods have performed, and whether the subject of study has itself reflected (or should reflect) on the methods that we use to explore it – in other words: whether the “information phenomenon” in general or the “Internet” in particular has challenged our traditional understanding of methods and well-established practice associated with them. In the third step (“looking ahead”) and based on an actual research scenario: possible future of methods were discussed, i.e., their potential paths of evolution, but also their interplay and integration (“multi-disciplinary approaches”) aimed at gaining a deeper and increasingly holistic understanding of the digitally networked information environment.