These recent weeks I have been struggling with defining a field and defining a research topic; which should include research questions and topics. That also included some methodology in Computer Science and the related field Information Systems.
So lets start with what I have concluded so far.
The topic of social computing is a field or part of Computer Science which deals with social aspects of computing. I will not go into the exact definition here but I imagine it reads something like "social aspects of using computers and interacting with computers and computer information networks". I think that might be a decent starting point.
It should be quite "simple", yet as always in academia, there is a tendency to complicate things wherever possible so lets remember that. However, by simple, I mean, just take the words "social" and "computing", and it should entail the intersection of these two broader topics as well as where they intersect.
That would make the topic somewhat interdisciplinary. I think that can be a good thing, that I could delve into topics like social science and sociology, as well as perhaps some implementation of computer technology in for example networks.
Okay, so this leads me to the methodology part. As I have recently learned and pondered is that computer science traditionally could be viewed in the positivist tradition. That would make sense, as computers are quite quantitative in nature and therefore would oblige by a classical scientific approach.
However, when working with social aspects, qualitative aspects also become important. Now, one can go either way: purely quantitative or qualitative but I think a mix might be nice. I'm thinking of a methodology where both aspects are being taken into account. (I will not go deeper into this at this point, but there's a case to make for choosing a mixed methodology in this particular case -- see below for somewhat of an example).
When I researched this and read about it, what crossed my mind was the meta level of this, or rather, the "computer science" angle, rather than just using some computer technology in a qualitative method. I guess it's wishful thinking but if quantitative method could be applied directly to "social data" - perhaps something would come out of it.
And it appears that this has been done, especially in the field of computational sociology, where a lot of interesting computer based methods are being used.
It also made me realize that another interest of mine; which I wasn't sure was quantitative, actually was - text analysis. However, I think it holds, or can hold, some qualitative aspects as well.
Well, this might too simple, or it is exactly what science should be about - connecting different areas which haven't been connected before (well you'll most likely won't be the first, but great minds think alike a what not)...
I could also see that one uses quantitative method for "exploratory" purposes, and then, perhaps defines the research problem and topic a bit further. Then adding a qualitative "measurement", and by combining the two, getting further in the analysis, than just using either of the two.
For instance: get the word count of a certain topic in a certain text or group of texts, or get the top 10 word counts in a certain text or group of texts. Lets say that word is something crucial to whatever is being studied, then it would make sense to learn more about this word and its meaning in the context, rather than just running the word frequency function and stating that this or these word/s are prevalent.
Well, this is what I've been thinking about and this is the preliminary conclusions I guess. Now I just need to pick a relevant "sub topic" and go ahead with my methodology... Unless it seems to be the case that I will need to use a specific methodology.
However, what I have described here, will be part of my "theory", I suppose. Or what I except to find. This will the be considered somewhat deductive, although I suspect there may have been some moments of "induction", as well. Or rather, my chosen sub topic, may or may not have support for what I have just posited.
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