Through instruments such as the
Yet although we’ve studied human behaviour and societies for a long time, we did not have an instrument as powerful as the telescope or microscope to observe the patterns of human behaviour.But now, digital technology and its ability to process vast amounts of human-generated data can be a powerful tool for social science research.The internet is similar to the telescope in that it allows us to observe things in ways that could not be done before. Through digital technology, scientists can observe the attitudes and behaviours of a large number of people. The internet allows observation and sometimes experimentation in a large scale.The collection of “big data” and the ability to do experiments using the internet, may be the start of a scientific revolution in social research. But there are important ethical considerations that also need to be factored in.
