After Cyberspace: Data-rich Media Online

The article takes up the question of the distinctiveness of the Web as site of social and cultural research. First, it seeks to situate analytical associations between the Internet and ideas of cyberspace and the virtual. It seeks to demonstrate the current conceptual opportunities available for cyberspace in security studies and the virtual in game studies. It subsequently makes a plea for a shift in focus for research away from the Internet as bracketed realm. How to employ the Internet for research into more than online culture only? Subsequently, it asks, what opportunities are available for research that takes up the Web as source? In the event there are currently competing programs that seek to introduce the Web as well as other digital media as data sets to be studied for purposes unrelated to cyberculture or similar. After a brief synopsis of the debate surrounding the Web as data set, the contribution made here is an underlying media theory that seeks to treat the Internet as a specific medium in the sense of the methods it offers. Thus instead of digitizing and bringing online existing method from the humanities and social sciences, the proposal is to follow the methods in the medium, and repurpose them for rather traditional social and cultural research purposes.