ABSTRACT
A growing community of researchers across the globe is now using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to produce empirical material. While many scholars analyse and discuss FOI data in their research reports, issues of data analysis and FOI have yet to be explicitly developed and addressed in methodological literature. We conceive of FOI requests in social research as a way of accessing data that governments do not proactively disclose and of rethinking the repertoires of empirical social science. We argue that content analysis, discourse analysis, metaphor analysis and social network analysis can be used together or independently by researchers analysing the results of FOI requests. In conclusion, we reflect on the broader implications of our arguments for literature on FOI used in the social sciences, and for literatures on these four approaches to data analysis.
