Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis

Description

Introducing the key questions and challenges faced by the researcher of digital discourse, this book provides an overview of the different methodological dimensions associated with this type of research. Bringing together a team of experts, chapters guide students and novice researchers through how to conduct rigorous, accurate, and ethical research with data from a wide range of online platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and online dating apps. Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis focuses on the key issues that any digital discourse analyst must consider, before tackling more specific topics and approaches, including how to work with multilingual or multimodal data. Emphasizing concrete, practical advice and illustrated with plentiful examples from research studies, each chapter introduces a new research dimension for consideration, briefly exploring how other discourse analysts have approached the topic before using an in-depth case study to highlight the main challenges and provide guidance on methodological decision-making. Supported by a range of pedagogical tools, including discussion questions and annotated further-reading lists, this book is an essential resource for students and any researcher new to analyzing digital discourse.

Camilla Vasquez is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of South Florida, USA.

[T]his insightful and informative book, which presents research methods for digital discourse analysis, will promote more breakthroughs in future studies. Therefore, we highly recommend this book to researchers and students who are interested in investigating digital discourse and practice. * Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Studies * Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis covers a wide range of methodological issues that are of primary interest to readers interested in the discourse of digital media. ... the volume is a valuable addition to the field of digital media and an essential reading for students in general and novice digital discourse analysts in particular. * Discourse Studies * This is an essential resource for anyone who wants to explore language and communication in online contexts. It covers the issues and problems researchers may face, and offers practical guidance and possible solutions through the accounts of well-known researchers in the field. -- Erika Darics, University of Groningen, Netherlands This is a much-needed volume which will help researchers of digital discourse navigate through the complex and sometimes thorny thicket of theories, methods and approaches. It provides clear and easy to understand introductions to a range of popular approaches to analysing digital discourse, from ethnography to corpus based approaches, and initiates a number of important debates about the future of discourse analysis in the digital age. -- Rodney Jones, Professor of Sociolinguistics, University of Reading, UK Including the work of scholars at the cutting edge of discourse analysis research, this book pulls back the curtain to show the inner workings of their research planning, thinking and decision making. Essential reading for new and developing researchers, it asks all the important questions. -- Guy Merchant, Professor of Literacy in Education, Sheffield Hallam University, UK