Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method, edited by Annette N. Markham and Nancy K. Baym. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008. 264 pp. $50.00 paper. ISBN 978-1412910019 (paper).

Internet Inquiry is not a step-by-step guide for performing online qualitative research; it is rather an invitation to reflect and discuss upon methods. It creates a conversation internally by the scholars and also motivates readers to think over their own research questions. This anthology is a collection developed around six chapters in which scholars discuss fundamental issues about the methodology and epistemology associated with conducting qualitative internet1 research. In each chapter the editors address a key question, which is answered by an experienced qualitative scholar and followed by responses from typically two other scholars, who address the first response and widen the range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. The answers are based on the scholars’ experiences and decisions made when performing research in areas such as collecting data, privacy, ethics, framing the research problem, effects on structures and process, and time and space considerations. Finally, each chapter lists several readings recommended by the scholars. The book contributes to new understandings of qualitative research in general. At the same time, throughout its text, the scholars keep a focus on the uniqueness of online environments. In the first chapter, Christine Hine, Lori Kendall, and danah boyd attempt to answer the question “How can qualitative internet researchers define the boundaries of their projects?” (1). The scholars emphasize that doing qualitative internet research challenges researchers in terms of setting boundaries for their projects, like deciding what to study and what to exclude, as well as deciding what will count as being data. The ethnographic approach in an online environment must be distinctly stipulated by the research question. The fundamental issue is that researchers must specify what responses are considered adequate and fit the research question. Defining the method and subject well also helps researchers make judgments about appropriate boundaries. The research question should stay clear of such boundaries due to the possibility of the ethnographic research taking different trajectories. Yet the boundaries of a research project evolve and change throughout the investigation process. In the second chapter, Shani Orgad, Maria Bakardijeva, and Radhika Gajjala address the question “How can researchers make sense of the issues involved in collecting and interpreting online and offline data?” (33). The scholars use constructivist and narrative approaches to the analysis of data present online and offline, with the responses analyzing how internet users browse the internet in different social contexts. Data from online and offline sources actually blend together, as in studies that analyze the integration of the internet in the everyday lives of users. Researchers must be aware and take a multimodal approach in which the online domain is contextualized based on the users’ lives. Yet scholars need to highlight the certain gap between the online traces left by internet users and their actual selves. In the third chapter, Malin Sveningsson Elm, Elizabeth A. Buchanan, and Susannah R. Stern discuss “How do various notions of privacy influence decisions in qualitative internet research?” (69). This issue brings up various questions about theoretical and ethical aspects such as protecting the privacy of participants. Since the internet may blur the boundaries between private and public spaces, the sense of privacy that is experienced through the internet may be closer to illusion than reality. Although that may be the case, users in general, from teenagers to seniors, are indeed concerned with privacy issues (e.g., boyd and Hargittai 2010; Webster 2006). Elm emphasizes that