Abstracting: Conducting Social Science Research in "Internet Time"

New paper by David Karpf posted on SSRN about how the fast diffusion of ideas through the Internet is challenging traditional social science methodology and what social scientists need to do to stay ahead of the curve:

This paper discusses three interrelated challenges related to conducting social science research in “Internet Time.” The rate at which the Internet is both diffusing through society and also developing new capacities is unprecedented. It creates some novel challenges for scholarly research. Many of our most robust research methods are based upon ceteris paribus assumptions that do not hold in the online environment. The rate of change online narrows the range of questions that can be answered using traditional tools. Meanwhile, new research methods are untested and often rely upon data sources that are incomplete and systematically flawed. The paper details these challenges, then proposes that scholars embrace the values of transparency and kludginess in order to answer important research questions in a rapidly-changing communications environment.