New Directions of Internet Research

Internet research (Jones, 1999) is recently concentrating the interest of many scholars not only because of the ubiquitousness of this new medium. Some, as Paccagnella (1997), hope that these studies could transcend the traditional quality/quantity divide in social research (cf., Miles & Huberman, 1994, pp. 40-43). In fact, the idea of an interpretive social science combined with statistical methods is not new at all. For instance, Max Weber (1949 [1922]) advocated the interplay between explanation (Erklären) and understanding (Verstehen). More recently, Pierre Bourdieu has made extensive use of correspondence analysis because the latter as a relational technique of data analysis corresponds exactly to what, in his view, “the reality of the social world is” and “it is a technique which ‘thinks’ in terms of relation” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 96).