Francesco Bailo

This applicable book outlines instructions on how to use Wikibase, a free collaborative platform that enables research teams to manage complex, multimodal data in one shared workspace. Francesco Bailo, Emily Booth and Jennifer Williams provide a comprehensive toolkit explaining this open-source infrastructure, providing practical guidance for researchers at all technical levels, from installation to advanced workflows. Drawing on real-world case studies investigating online misinformation and political communication, the authors demonstrate how Wikibase bridges the qualitative-quantitative divide, allowing teams to store unstructured content whilst building structured relationships through their data. Accessible to diverse skill sets with guidance ranging from conceptual frameworks for qualitative researchers to technical implementation for computational specialists, it fosters genuine interdisciplinary integration. Solutions to interdisciplinary collaboration challenges are presented, including shared conceptual frameworks (ontologies), common terminology development and workflows that accommodate diverse methodological expertise. How to use Wikibase for Mixed-Methods Research is a crucial resource for scholars and students adopting mixed methods across multiple disciplines, particularly those in the social sciences, digital humanities and computational fields. Researchers working on collaborative projects in education, health sciences, public policy and digital communication studies will benefit from this book’s guidance on maximising the capabilities and resources of Wikibase.

This book reflects on the political capacity of citizen users to impact politics, explaining the danger in assuming that mass online participation has unconditionally democratising effects. Focusing on the case of Italy's Five Star Movement, the book argues that Internet participation is naturally unequal and, without normative and strong design efforts, Internet platforms can generate noisy, undemocratic crowds instead of self-reflexive, norm-bounded communities. The depiction of a democratising Internet can be easily exploited by those who manage these platforms to sell crowds as deliberating publics. As the Internet, almost everywhere, turns into the primary medium for political engagement, it also becomes the symbol of what is wrong with politics. Internet users experience unprecedented, instantaneous and personalised access to information and communication and, by comparison, they feel a much stronger level of irrelevance in the existing political system.

This book reflects on the political capacity of citizen users to impact politics, explaining the danger in assuming that mass online participation has unconditionally democratising effects. Focusing on the case of Italy's Five Star Movement, the book argues that Internet participation is naturally unequal and, without normative and strong design efforts, Internet platforms can generate noisy, undemocratic crowds instead of self-reflexive, norm-bounded communities. The depiction of a democratising Internet can be easily exploited by those who manage these platforms to sell crowds as deliberating publics. As the Internet, almost everywhere, turns into the primary medium for political engagement, it also becomes the symbol of what is wrong with politics. Internet users experience unprecedented, instantaneous and personalised access to information and communication and, by comparison, they feel a much stronger level of irrelevance in the existing political system.