The Google Voter: New Article in Information, Communication & Society

Earlier this month, the journal Information, Communication & Society published the paper “The Google Voter: Search Engines and Elections in the New Media Ecology,” of which I am the lead author. This article, which can be accessed freely on the journal’s website,  discusses some of the main research findings from the VoterEcology project, on which I collaborated with Profs. Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow) and Sarah Oates (University of Maryland, College Park), as well as Dr. Dounia Mahlouly (King’s College, London). The paper fills an important gap in our understanding of contemporary information-gathering practices and media environments that surround elections, focusing on the use of search engines by voters in the U.S. and the UK. While search engines remain the primary channel for citizens in these and other democratic countries to engage with election-related information online, there is a dearth of research about the implications of this practice. This paper combines Google Trends data with the analysis of news media coverage to shed light on the opportunities and drawbacks generated by search engine use in elections and reflects on the need to develop innovative methodologies capable of exploring the new media ecologies that are emerging from the interaction of novel and more established forms of media.

Facebook Research Ethics in Northern Ireland: New Article with Paul Reilly

Paul Reilly (Information School – University of Sheffield) and I continue our collaboration on ethical challenges in online research with a new article about studying Facebook groups in post-conflict Northern Ireland in the journal Information, Communication and Society. In this article, we discuss the development of an ethical stance for the study of Facebook pages associated with the 2012 Belfast flag protests.

To access a copy of the article, click here.

Article on ethical challenges in online research published – Free downloads for a limited time

The article on ethical challenges in researching sensitive issues online that I wrote together with Paul Reilly (Media & Communications, University of Leicester) is now available for download from Information, Communication, and Society‘s website. Click here to access the abstract, HTML and PDF versions of the article. If you’re interested but don’t have a subscription to Taylor and Francis journals, click here to download a free copy of (for a limited time only).

Paper accepted for Information, Communication and Society

A paper I recently wrote with Paul Reilly (University of Leicester) about ethical challenges in social media research on sensitive issues has been accepted for publication in Information, Communication and Society. While this should be available soon on the journal’s website, a previous version presented at the 2012 European Communication Conference in Istanbul can be found here.