Twitterology + Latourology
I just came back from WebSci - the "Web Science" conference. Papers were sane, keynote were plenty and of very high quality, the organisation of the conference was amazing.
Papers were mostly quantitative. One critical thinker unfairly criticized these papers to be Twitterology, and proposed to fix just that with additional work, which, others argued, manages to do Twitterology and Latourology  (after Bruno Latour) at the same time - a mixed approach so-to-speak :) Unfortunately, only few papers were qualitative. I hope we will see a more balanced programme in the future - so, CHI & CSCW folks, please consider submitting your work ;) Well-grounded qualitative work is badly needed in this young community. Tip: I would use grounded theory...
p.s. For Laturologists: EU is financing a new project. If you understand Latour (some don't) and want to help him, please refer to this video (that's where EU taxpayers' money is going)
June 28th, 2012 - 01:24
As someone relatively new to research in this field, I’m wondering if you can suggest some people that are doing ‘good’ qualitative work at CSCW and CHI ?Â
June 29th, 2012 - 01:31
Good question – look at the CSCW 2012 papers by http://www.ics.uci.edu/~balani/Publications.html
As for textbook, IÂ really like Grounded Theory, so I would suggest:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basics-Qualitative-Research-Techniques-Procedures/dp/141290644X
hope it helps