Research Methods for Digital Work and Organization

Gillian Symon is Professor of Organization Studies in the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on understanding digital work and organization as sociomaterial practice, and she specialises in qualitative approaches to analysing and understanding work and organization. She has co-edited four compendia of qualitative methods in this area, including Organizational Qualitative Research: Core Methods and Current Challenges (Symon and Cassell, 2012, Sage Publications). She is also co-founding editor of the journal Qualitative Research in Organization and Management (Emerald Publishing, with Catherine Cassell). Katrina Pritchard is a Professor in the School of Management, Swansea University. She is a qualitative researcher who embraces methodological diversity and innovation. She has published widely on topics ranging from digital ethics, ethnography, and visual studies to multi-method research, drawing on her research in organization studies across the topics of identity, diversity, and technology use at work. With Rebecca Whiting, she recently authored Collecting Qualitative Data using Digital Methods (2020, Sage Publications). Christine Hine is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey. She is a sociologist of science and technology with a particular focus on the role played by new technologies in the knowledge construction process. She has a major interest in the development of ethnography in technical settings and in the use of the Internet in social research. She is author of Virtual Ethnography (2000, Sage Publications), The Internet (2012, Oxford), and Ethnography for the Internet (2015, Bloomsbury), and editor of Virtual Methods (2005, Berg) and co-editor of Digital Methods for Social Science (2016, Palgrave).

1. Introduction: The Challenge of Digital Work and Organization for Research MethodsSection 1. Working With Screens 2. Wrestling with Digital Objects and Technologies in Studies of Work 3. Screen Mediated Work in an Ethnography of Statistical Practices: Screen Theories and Methodological Positions 4. 'Me, Myself, and iPhone': Sociomaterial Reflections on the Phone as Methodological Instrument in London's Gig-Economy 5. The Heartbeat of Fieldwork: On Doing Ethnography in Traffic Control RoomsSection 2. Digital Working Practices 6. Digital Diaries as a Research Method for Capturing Practices In Situ 7. Using Netnography to Investigate Travel Blogging as Digital Work 8. Autoethnography and the Digital Volunteer 9. Research Methods to Study and Empower Crowd WorkersSection 3. Distributed Work and Organizing 10. Exploring Organisation Through Contributions: Using Activity Theory for the Study of Contemporary Digital Labour Practices 11. Thick Big Data: Development of Mixed Methods for Study of Wikipedia Working Practices 12. Images, Text, and Emotions: Multimodality Research on Emotion-Symbolic Work 13. Structuring the Haystack: Studying Online Communities with Dictionary-Based Supervised Text Analysis and Network VisualizationSection 4. Digital Traces of Work 14. After Vanity Metrics: Critical Analytics for Social Media Analysis 15. Investigating Online Unmanaged Organization: Antenarrative as a Methodological Approach 16. Tinkering with Method as we Go: An Account of Capturing Digital Traces of Work on Social Media 17. Organizational Culture in Tracked Changes: Format and Affordance in Consequential Workplace Documents 18. Conclusion: Reflections on Ethics, Skills, and Future Challenges in Research Methods for Digital Work and Organizations