The application of digital methods in a life course approach to family studies

Chapter highlights: • Digital research methods have application in the identification of data sources (such as the use of digital traces of online activity within social media), within data collection techniques (such as web scraping techniques) and through data analysis approaches, including data visualisation. • The three tropes of digital methods are the structural aspects of social and technological networks (trope 1), working with archival and real time digital trace data (trope 2) and the aware nature of ubiquitous technologies (trope 3). • Longitudinal approaches to data collection through digital methods introduce methodological considerations of device and data compatibility, field site disruption and disappearance, and changing social receptivity towards the data collection technologies over time. Keywords: digital research methods, life course approach, digital networked technologies, big data, social media.