James Ash & Rob Kitchin 
Researching Digital Life [PDF ebook] 
Orientations, Methods and Practice

We now live in a world where all aspects of everyday life are thoroughly mediated by digital technologies. Making sense of digital life is accordingly an essential undertaking for social science and humanities scholars.

This multidisciplinary book provides an essential guide to researching digital life:

• Orienting readers with respect to methodologies, research design, and research ethics.


• Detailing key research methods, including interviews, surveys, ethnographies, walking methodologies, arts-based and participatory approaches, historical analysis, data visualisation, mapping and data analytics.


• Demonstrating these methods in action in real-world studies that have investigated apps and interfaces, social and locative media, mobilities, smart cities, and digital labour and work.

The authors provide:
• Non-Eurocentric perspectives and case studies from diverse disciplines 
• Annotated further reading to help you situate your research alongside existing research in your field 
• An outline of future directions for researching digital life.

Accessible in style and richly illustrated, the chapters provide a wealth of key insights and practical information to ensure research projects are successfully planned and implemented.

Table of Content

Orientations
Introduction
Methodologies, Ontologies and Epistemologies
Research Design and Implementation
Research Ethics
Methods and Approaches
Interviews, Surveys, Observation and (Auto)Ethnography
Walking Methodologies, Walkthroughs and Audits
Arts-Based Methods
Participatory Methods
Historical Methods
Data Visualisation and Mapping
Data Analytics
Methods in Action
Apps and Interfaces
Social and Locative Media
Mobilities
Smart Cities
Digital Labour
Conclusion
Final thoughts

About the author

Agnieszka Leszczynski is a Lecturer in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her work is situated at the subdisciplinary interfaces of GIScience and human geography and examines issues around geospatial technologies and critical GIScience. She has published a range of articles in leading Geography journals including Progress in Human Geography and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.