Digital Methods

This book offers up the premise that the Internet has enabled new methods of original research (new “digital methods”) that didn’t exist before. Things like link analysis, search engine indexing analysis, and site crawling analysis.

Some of it is interesting, like an extended comparison of the Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian versions of the Wikipedia pages of a war crime, which highlighted differences in perspective. Also, there’s a discussion of how to figure out the boundaries of a countries web presence. Other parts of it are tedious and academic, and there’s one chapter on “social method and post-demographics” which is almost non-sensical.

A mixed bag. Parts of it made me think, but other parts are less valuable unless you’re actually and academic researcher.