Abstract

ESTALELLA, Adolfo  and  ARDEVOL, Elisenda. e-research: challenges and opportunities for social sciences. Convergencia [online]. 2011, vol.18, n.55, pp.87-111. ISSN 2448-5799.

The incorporation of digital technologies and the Internet into the research practices of social scientists is accompanied by a whole range of expectations to revolution science. Without uncritically celebrating these discourses or minimizing them, and following the tradition of analysis of Science and Technology Studies (STS), we argue that these expectations open spaces for intervening and transforming the epistemic practices of social scientists, a process we have called e-research. Technology not only makes tasks easier or automates them, but raises a whole range of methodological and epistemic issues. We discuss some of the problems that arise from the use of Internet as a research tool and conclude that while digital technologies offer an opportunity to reformulate social science research methods, researchers are faced with the need of maintaining a reflexive practice that permanently problematizes the incorporation of these technologies to their epistemic practices.

Keywords : qualitative research; e-research; methodology; internet; digital technologies.

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