Crossing into the digital realm (Online and digital research – the issues for researchers from a qualitative psychology perspective)

This article reports on a discussion with a group of qualitative researchers working with digital and online research. The conversation took as its starting point the social and technological changes that make distinctions between on and off line selves increasingly irrelevant. Through this lens the group considered the distinctive contribution of qualitative research methods to investigate the complexity of the networked human experience, including the embodied and emotional elements of life online. They also considered the new BPS internet research guidelines and future areas for research, particularly the impact of an intensified life lived out through the imagined presence of another and the blurring of public and private, work and personal lives.