Call for Papers for the Session at the ISA Forum

Analyzing Communities on the Internet

Session by RC 33 (Research Committee on Logic and Methodology) at the 2nd
ISA Forum of Sociology (“Social Justice and Democratization”)

August 1st – 4th, 2012, Buenos Aires, Argentina

In the last two decades, the internet has increasingly been providing
platforms that enable communication within communities such as families,
religious communities, fan communities, brand communities, communities of
practice and social movements to become partly or totally
computer-mediated. This results in new methodological challenges, which the
session aims to explore. Potential topics for this session should therefore
address one or more of the following questions:

- What kind of research designs, methods, and techniques are suitable for
the investigation of communities on the internet? Can methods from other
fields of research be transferred to this subject or does it need own,
field-specific methods? If this true, which methods would this be? Are
there, in contrast, field-specific methods that could be useful for other
sociological research fields?
- Which sampling strategies are appropriate for this field of research?
Specifically: Which parts of communities can by access via the internet,
which are excluded? What differences between different types of communities
do exist?
- Which strategies of data collection and data analysis are suitable to the
exploration of communities on the internet? What kinds of data are
appropriate to empirically capture the phenomenon, and what kind of
information can be gained from these data?
Papers debating general methodological questions and papers discussing
specific problems using a concrete data type in a specific research project
are both equally welcome.

Submission

Abstract submission is accepted through
http://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2012/cfp.cgi.

Please note that only abstracts submitted online can be incorporated in the
sessions, and no changes/updates to the submitted abstract will be allowed.
It is the author’s responsibility to submit a correct abstract – any errors
in spelling, grammar, or scientific fact will be reproduced as typed by the
author.

Deadlines

Submission of abstracts: December 15th, 2011 Notification of authors:
January 31st, 2012 Registration for the Conference: April 10th, 2012

Further Information

On the Conference: http://www.isa-sociology.org/buenos-aires-2012/
On ISA: http://www.isa-sociology.org/
On RC 33: http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc33.htm
On RC 03: http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc03.htm