Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, Paperback

An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital age

The rapid spread of social media, smartphones, and other digital wonders enables us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable, offering entirely new approaches to core questions about social behavior. Bit by Bit is the key to unlocking these powerful methods. In this authoritative and accessible book, Matthew Salganik explains how the digital revolution is transforming the way social scientists observe behavior, ask questions, run experiments, and engage in mass collaborations. Featuring a wealth of real-world examples and invaluable advice on how to tackle the thorniest ethical challenges, Bit by Bit is the essential guide to doing social research in this fast-evolving digital age.

Matthew J. Salganik is professor of sociology at Princeton University, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Information Technology Policy and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning.