Description
Studying Internet-based social and organizational phenomena presents a challenge to the Information Systems field as well as the wider social sciences and humanity community. This paperquestions how and to what extent digital methods could be used and what role they could play in interpretive research. From an ontological and epistemological view, we propose that digital tools could provide a research ‘Oligoptica’ that can uniquely connect the macro and micro levels of the phenomenon to provide an in-depth understanding of the connected whole however inevitably limited. We argue that an interpretive digitally-native research tool could open up further research questions that could be otherwise obscured however it might not be capable of supporting the finding of answers to them. We argue that the IS field is equipped to engage in debates about the development and use of digital methods and this study is hoped to provide a step on this engagement.
Recommended Citation
Elbanna, Amany, "The digital turn in interpretive research: opportunities and limitations" (2015). AMCIS 2015 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2015/ResearchMethods/GeneralPresentations/1
The digital turn in interpretive research: opportunities and limitations
Studying Internet-based social and organizational phenomena presents a challenge to the Information Systems field as well as the wider social sciences and humanity community. This paperquestions how and to what extent digital methods could be used and what role they could play in interpretive research. From an ontological and epistemological view, we propose that digital tools could provide a research ‘Oligoptica’ that can uniquely connect the macro and micro levels of the phenomenon to provide an in-depth understanding of the connected whole however inevitably limited. We argue that an interpretive digitally-native research tool could open up further research questions that could be otherwise obscured however it might not be capable of supporting the finding of answers to them. We argue that the IS field is equipped to engage in debates about the development and use of digital methods and this study is hoped to provide a step on this engagement.