| This dissertation addresses the twofold problem of (1) designing a Web-based data collection strategy and implementing that design in support of social research, and (2) utilizing social behavioral data from Web-based sources for the purpose of revisiting classical sociological research questions. The Internet, broadly, and the World Wide Web, specifically, have rapidly become popular across many sectors of life in recent years, and this popularity has also led to innovative uses of the technology for everyday social activities. As a result, academics across many fields have begun to study online social behavior. Sociologists are uniquely positioned to study online social behavior, as the field itself has developed and refined numerous methodological tools that are well-suited to online social behavioral research. To support this claim, I present two applied examples of sociological research that utilizes social behavioral data collected from the Web. In support of these applied cases, I also present a methodological treatment of the task of collecting these kind of data, as well as describe a new data collection software tool that I developed to assist with such a task. |
