New Blog Series: Good Reads in Digital Religion & Resources on Methods for Studying Digital Religion

In 2013 the network will start a new blog series entitled "Good Reads in Digital Religion" which will offer analysis and summaries of key books and articles in the study of new media, religion and digital culture. Members of the network team as well as authors will be invited to offer critical reflections on various publication over the next few months. If you are member of the network and have a book or article you would like to blog about or see covered please send your recommendations or offers to review to digitalreligion@tamu.edu.

As a way to get this theme started I want to offer some inital reflections on good reads in research methodology. A number of good texts exist related to methodology and research within Internet Studies. As a starting point I highly recommend Baym & Markham's Internet Inquiry, see: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/biblio/book/462, Jones's Doing Internet Research, see: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/biblio/book/463, and Johns, Chen & Hall's Online Social Research as texts that provide good surveys of the variety of approaches which exisits in internet research and the ethical issues they raise. For a fuller list of internet research methodology and ethics resources also check out the list found at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~azy/refmetho.htm

In the study of Digital Religion there still no full texts, which deal strictly with religion and internet research methods. However the recently released Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (Routledge 2012) offers two relevant chapters. Knut Lundby reflects on theoretical approaches to the study of religion and new media, see :http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/biblio/book-chapter/828, and Mark Johns talks about ethics in studying religion online, see: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/biblio/book-chapter/829. Also in another text, Tim Hutchings explores broadly the development and application of digital research methodologies in "Religion and the Digital Humanities: New Tools, Methods and Perspectives:, see: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/biblio/book-chapter/605. However, this shows there is definitely room for scholars to write and specifically reflect on the unique challenges posed when studying religion online.