Innovation in Research Methods: Investigative Social Research



Mair, Michael ORCID: 0000-0003-0929-5426, Meckin, Robert and Elliot, Mark
(2020) Innovation in Research Methods: Investigative Social Research. [Internet Publication]

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Abstract

On the 21st and 22nd November at the University of Liverpool in London, NCRM held an innovation forum to explore the embryonic field of “investigative social research” and the methods that underpin it. A dynamic and frequently high impact contemporary field, investigative social research encompasses work by non-governmental organisation/civil society researchers, data and investigative journalists, open source investigators, lawyers and independent researchers alongside social scientists of all kinds, from anthropologists, criminologists, epidemiologists, geographers, historians and sociologists through to those involved in accounting, economics and financial studies as well as data science. This emerging global field is characterised by the breadth of output it produces: often fast-circulating studies, news stories, reports, trackers and apps which attract global public attention. Researchers in the field make heavy use of: “new data technologies and analytics and other means of intellectual cross pollination, exchanging ideas and sometimes working and writing together, side by side, across borders, and genres each of them with different perspectives, backgrounds, interests, professional expertise, not to mention internationally and culturally diverse geographic and economic circumstances” (Lewis 2018: 23). In this context, investigative researchers are developing approaches which, as Ruppert and Savage observe, “engage with new forms of data and analytic techniques, undertake rich empirical analysis as well as develop new resources for understanding [the world and what happens in it]” (Ruppert and Savage 2009: 17). In so doing, researchers are contributing to the development of distinctive new “ways of knowing” (ibid.). No longer the preserve of universities and academic disciplines, this opening up and reworking of “the methods and practices that researchers and analysts use to make sense of data” and do useful things with it (Arribas-Bel & Reades 2018: 5) is happening across disciplinary, sectoral and geographical boundaries (with collaborations spanning the globe and involving researchers from countries in the Global South as much as the North). Investigative social research, as the forum showed, is often data intensive, digitally enabled, highly collaborative and impactful and gives rise to its own distinctive “politics of method” (Savage & Burrows 2007, Gray 2019). The purpose of the forum was to explore the methods that enable researchers in this field to pursue topics of social, political and economic import. Whether it is the investigations into the Panama and Paradise Papers, the identification of the Salisbury Novichok poisoners, the documenting of NATO airstrikes as well as civilian deaths across the Middle East, the verification of political violence in Africa through crowd-sourced video and photographic imagery, the tracking and tracing of those infected by COVID-19 during the current pandemic or in quickly contextualising and framing emerging news stories by drawing on new datasets and analytical techniques, investigative social research engages with important aspects of our lives.

Item Type: Internet Publication
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 03 Sep 2020 14:43
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 23:46
Open Access URL: https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/news/show.php?article=5583
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3093429