[new book] Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences

[Mike Thelwall]

Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social
Sciences

Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services
Mike Thelwall, University of Wolverhampton

Webometrics is concerned with measuring aspects of the web: web sites, web
pages, parts of web pages, words in web pages, hyperlinks, web search
engine results. The importance of the web itself as a communication medium
and for hosting an increasingly wide array of documents, from journal
articles to holiday brochures, needs no introduction. Given this huge and
easily accessible source of information, there are limitless possibilities
for measuring or counting on a huge scale (e.g., the number of web sites,
the number of web pages, the number of blogs) or on a smaller scale (e.g.,
the number of web sites in Ireland, the number of web pages in the CNN web
site, the number of blogs mentioning Barack Obama before the 2008
presidential campaign). This book argues that it can be useful for social
scientists to measure aspects of the web and explains how this can be
achieved on both a small and large scale. The book is intended for social
scientists with research topics that are wholly or partly online (e.g.,
social networks, news, political communication) and social scientists with
offline research topics with an online reflection, even if this is not a
core component (e.g., diaspora communities, consumer culture, linguistic
change). The book is also intended for library and information science
students in the belief that the knowledge and techniques described will be
useful for them to guide and aid other social scientists in their
research. In addition, the techniques and issues are all directly relevant
to library and information science research problems.

Table of Contents: Introduction / Web Impact Assessment / Link Analysis /
Blog Searching / Automatic Search Engine Searches: LexiURL Searcher / Web
Crawling: SocSciBot / Search Engines and Data Reliability / Tracking User
Actions Online / Advanced Techniques / Summary and Future Directions

http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00176ED1V01Y200903ICR004