Paper short abstract:

Responding to the computational turn in social sciences, qualitative researchers have adapted, extended, and transformed their methods. This roundtable aims to situate these methodological innovations in the landscape of digital methods, and to reflect on the future of qualitative research.

Paper long abstract:

This roundtable session, chaired by Guillaume Latzko-Toth, with the listed authors as discussants, presents a structured and inclusive discussion on the topic of the open panel. In their efforts to grasp the fast-paced transformations of social, cultural, and scientific practices in the context of an ever more digitally mediated life, social and humanities researchers are encouraged to constantly adapt, extend, and transform their methods. Rooted in qualitative, constructivist, and critical approaches stemming from related epistemologies, these methodological developments contribute to building an extended repertoire of qualitative and mixed methods for the digital age. While they take up the idea of “following the medium” by leveraging digital affordances (Rogers, 2013), these “hands-on” methods are not primarily focused on automated analysis nor the visualisation of large corpora of traces generated in an automated way. On the contrary, these methodological developments highlight the assemblages, hybridisations and bricolages that develop on the margins and in the interstices of the old canons of social science and the new canons of data science. The goal of this roundtable is to explore the unique features, innovative aspects, and diverse range of these emerging methods, discussing their role in advancing digital research and qualitative methodologies.