Methodological practices in social movement online research

Despite the growing role of digital media in mobilizing protest and even changing its logic, the reflection on online methods in social movement studies has been quite limited until now. While such methods are generally employed in empirical research, there has been little reflection on the limits and opportunities they entail, and in general their relationship with offline techniques has been poorly discussed and problematized. This chapter thus aims to fill this gap in the literature. Building on recent discussion of online methods in the social sciences, this chapter: (a) discusses methodological problems related to collecting and archiving online data; (b) addresses sampling problems in researching the online dimension of social movements; and (c) examines the pros and cons of specific techniques to analyze online movements.