This topic has provided a brief introduction of how digital methods could be incorporated into research exploring race and racism. In general, digital methods are of growing research interest because of ever-increasing social media use, the pervasiveness of social media in people’s lives, the inherently interdisciplinary nature of digital methods, and the increased influence social media have on offline events. Now, there are several established research centres at different academic institutions dedicated it examining the cross-section between race and racism and the digital, such as the Centre for Critical Race and Digital Studies. This centre has produced a variety of publications, some of which have been explored in this intensive. In particular, we looked at Beyond the Hashtag to get an idea of what kind of research can be produced when exploring this overall between race and the digital. Hopefully, this has given you some ideas about how digital methods could be used in your own research. It’s likely that whatever you are or would like to research in relation to race and racism, digital data exists that you can collect and analyse.
Stop and Reflect:
Reflect on your own research area and/or research interests
Think about how you could incorporate digital data into your research. Where on the internet could you find the data? Do you know if there are communities online that discuss your research topic or interest? Could incorporating this data into your research provide new findings and/or strengthen your existing findings?
If you are interested in incorporating digital methods into your research, or would just like to learn more about digital methods, there is a further RISE intensive titled Digital Research Methods (Content Analysis) which provides more information about how to do digital research.