ABSTRACT

The entries grouped under 'Engaging and distributing' share an interest in how engagement and distribution can be understood as important parts of methodological processes. The theme of engaging prompts researchers to think how they involves with research material, requiring them to consider how different actors, are implicated in the process of doing research. Distributing is inevitably linked to engaging, as when researchers acknowledge a multifaceted engagement in their approach, it leads them to consider knowledge production as dispersed and disseminated. Engaging and distributing have always been of methodological concern. The researchers are drawing attention to them because of the new opportunities afforded by changes in research infrastructures including the rise of ubiquitous computing, social media, digital games, changes in user interfaces, initiatives relating to open data and open access, and increases in computational power. Many authors share a keen interest in how research questions play out in our contemporary mediatized and often digitalized culture.