Research

This page contains a breakdown of our Research Projects

1. Online Dating in South Africa 2004, 2006
2. Internet Cafe industry in South Africa: 2004, 2008
3. Blogging in South Africa, 2008 (tentative)

Online research is when you use the Internet to find information about a specific topic or a problem. To the extent that the Internet is widely and readily accessible to hundreds of millions of people in many parts of the world, can provide practically instant information on most topics, and emerged only in the last 10 years, it is having a profound impact on the way in which ideas are formed and knowledge is created.

Research is a broad term. Here, it is used as in “looking it up (on the Web)”. It includes any activity where a topic is identified, and an effort is made to actively gather information for the purpose of furthering understanding (no matter how trivial-seeming the subject). Common applications of Internet research include personal research on a particular subject (something mentioned on the news, a health problem, etc), students doing research for academic projects and papers, and journalists and other writers researching stories. It should be distinguished from scientific research – research following a defined and rigorous process – that is carried out on the Internet, also from straightforward finding of specific info, like locating a name or phone number (and it does not refer to, research about the Internet).

Prior to the Internet, and particularly, the World Wide Web, print – books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed publications – were the primary source of in-depth information in the most of the world. In print, the book is the basic research unit. Consulting one or more books on a topic was the usual research method for most people.

Compared to the Internet, print physically limits access to information. A book has to be identified, then actually obtained. On the Net, the Web can be searched, and typically hundreds or thousands of pages can be found with some relation to the topic, within seconds. In addition, email (including mailing lists), online discussion forums (aka message boards, BBS’s), and other personal communication facilities (instant messaging, IRC, newsgroups, etc) provide direct access to experts and other individuals with relevant interests and knowledge.

The Internet also presents an alternate body of knowledge to the traditional print library resources, because much of the content is different. Internet resources have similar (or “the same”) information as print sources, but they generally do not simply reproduce print content. Although books are nowadays produced using a digital version of the content, for most books such a version is not available on the Internet. On the other hand, thousands of books and other print publications have been made available online that would be extremely difficult to locate otherwise, including out-of-print books, and classic literature and textbooks that would be much less accessible in their printed form.

As the Internet continues to expand, Internet research may become the predominant method of informing ourselves. More people will form ideas based on what they believe is their active “research” (“looking it up”, “reading up about it”), rather than relying on more-or-less passively (environmentally) acquired information (the daily news, “someone told me about”, “saw an article on”).

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