Navigating digital frontiers: methodological potentials and ethical challenges in social research

This special issue, “Navigating digital frontiers: methodological and ethical challenges in social research”, will contributes to the debate about the implications of the complex interactions between digital technology, social research and social life. The different papers collected in this issue look both at epistemic concerns related to the nature of digital data and normative concerns related to the consequences of digital social research. On the epistemic side, it critically analyses the changing nature of the data collection process, the place and role of technological objects, affordances and applications, the influence and entity of digital biases by at the same time looking at the methodological principles which are not easily dismissed by the new availability of data and the strengthened potentials of methods and techniques. On the normative side, social research in the digital context also raises several ethical dilemmas deriving both from institutional deregulation and innovative challenges.