The Internet and the Future of Social Science Research

This chapter discusses how new or expanded capabilities emergent from IRCT may contribute to changing social science research, particularly how research topics, methods and capabilities might change with increasing integration of IRCT into the daily social lives of most people in developed and developing societies. We have not limited ourselves to online research because we believe that firm distinctions between online and offline research is a present phenomenon, and that online research will rapidly become one of the many different contexts within which research is carried out – not the odd one out.However, we expect all social science research to change, for the very reasons that online research will become accepted and ordinary when online social phenomena become integrated into wider social and cultural life.