Front Cover -- Big Data? Qualitative Approaches to Digital Research -- Copyright page -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Digital Social Research: Potential and Overview -- Institutional Mobilizations and Appropriations of Data -- Fields and Sites -- Digital, Digitized and Participatory Methods -- Visibilities, Routines and Practices -- Invisibilities, Gaps and Ways of Knowing -- References -- From Cyberspace to the Dataverse: Trajectories in Digital Social Research -- Introduction -- Data, Data Everyware -- Rhetorics of the Dataverse -- Methodological Crisis and Renewal in the Social Sciences -- Debates about Data, Society and Method -- What's Social about 'Social Data'? -- Can We Socialize Digital Data? -- Is the Medium the Method? -- Conclusion: Towards Thick Social Data? -- References -- Part I: Institutional Mobilizations and Appropriations of Data -- Politics, Policy and Privatisation in the Everyday Experience of Big Data in the NHS -- Introduction -- Information and the NHS -- Inverting Infrastructures -- The Politics of Interoperability -- Automating Care? -- Care.data -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Big Data Ambivalence: Visions and Risks in Practice -- Introduction -- What is Big (Social) Data? -- Big Data and Empowered Users -- Big Data and Social Harm from Above -- Digital Vigilantism: Users Doing Bad Things with Big Data -- States Unable to do Bad Things with Big Data -- Conclusion -- References -- Part II: Fields and Sites -- The Researcher and the Never-Ending Field: Reconsidering Big Data and Digital Ethnography -- Introduction -- Big Data in Communication Research -- Challenges of Datafication and Dataism -- Reconsidering Big Data and Digital Ethnography from a Qualitative Perspective -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Researching Forums in Online Ethnography: Practice and Ethics -- Introduction.

The Benefits and Disadvantages of Studying a Forum -- Research Method and Planning -- Ethics Online -- Heteronormativity and the Official Forum -- The 'Missing Genders' Thread: Heteronormativity and the Embodied Avatar -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Part III: Digital, Digitized and Participatory Methods -- Marketing Narratives: Researching Digital Data, Design and the In/Visible Consumer -- Introduction -- Setting the Scene and Using Marketing Narratives to Explore Digital Data -- Digital Interactive Content -- Conditions of Digital Consumer Data -- Digital Ethics, Informed Consent and Anonymity -- Marketisation of Digital Data -- Suggestions for Improving Research Practices for Digital Data -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Not Being There: Research at a Distance with Video, Text and Speech -- Research Work -- Gaming and Crowdsourcing -- Producing Diaries -- Documenting and Mobility -- Sharing and Performing -- The Researchers and the Researched: Just another False Binary? -- Conclusion -- References -- Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: Research Outside Paradigmatic Boundaries -- Introduction -- A Brief Note on Nomenclature -- Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: Some Recent (and Not So Recent) Persistent Concerns -- Closeness to the Data -- Driving the Research Process -- Theory-Building Using CAQDAS -- Attitudes towards CAQDAS -- Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: Perceived Advantages -- System Closure -- Visibility and Transparency -- Rigour and Reliability -- Qualitative/Quantitative Blurring -- Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: Higher Education in a Digital Economy -- Choosing and Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: The Affordances of Technology -- Choosing and Using Software for Qualitative Data Analysis: Reliability, Generalisability and the Politics of Method.

Reliability and Generalisability -- The Politics of Method -- Conclusions: Research outside Paradigmatic Boundaries -- References -- Part IV: Visibilities, Routines and Practices -- Missed Miracles and Mystical Connections: Qualitative Research, Digital Social Science and Big Data -- Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle -- Missed Miracles: The Importance of Actual Practices and 'Small Data' -- Mystical Connections: 'Big Data' as Ideology -- Atop the Highest Building: Or, So What for Digital Social Science? -- Notes -- References -- Digitization and Memory: Researching Practices of Adaption to Visual and Textual Data in Everyday Life -- Introduction -- Digital Devices, Data and Memory Practices -- Method -- Digital Photography and Memory Making -- Continuities: Reconfiguring the Family Album -- Discontinuities: Sharing and the Management of Circulation -- Smartphones, Time and Memory -- Coordinating and Managing Multiple Mediated Practices -- Managing the Real-Time -- Managing Visual Time -- Data, Devices and Practices of Adaptation -- Notes -- References -- Part V: Invisibilities, Gaps, and Ways of Knowing -- 'Where No-One Can Hear You Scream': An Analysis of the Potential of 'Big Data' for Rural Research in the British Context -- Overview -- Introduction - A Sociology of the Rural -- On the Possibility of a 'Digital Rural Studies' -- Big Data as a New Addition to the Research Toolkit -- Digitisation as a Game-Changer - An Evaluation of UK Firearm Licence Policy Innovation -- Evaluation and Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Investigating the Other: Considerations on Multi-Species Research -- Introduction -- The Promise of Post-Humanism: Documenting Human-Animal Relationships -- Powerful Methods: Political Methods -- Can Multi-Disciplinary Research Work in Practice? -- An Example: The Case of Bovine Lameness -- Communicating across Research Disciplines.

Multi-Species Ethnography -- Final Discussion -- Notes -- References -- About the Authors.