Compare methods

	Digital Methods	Actor-Network Theory Analysis
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2013	1984
Originator	Richard Rogers, Amsterdam Digital Methods Initiative	Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law
Type	Empirical research approach for online data	Material-semiotic theory and analytic method
Seminal source	Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262018838	Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199256051
Aliases	Follow the medium, Natively digital research, Web epistemology methods	ANT analysis, Sociology of translation, Actant-network mapping
Related	4	4
Summary	Digital methods is an empirical research approach, developed by Richard Rogers and the Amsterdam Digital Methods Initiative, that takes the methods of online platforms and devices—the link, the like, the hashtag, the search engine ranking—and repurposes them for social and cultural research. Its guiding maxim is to 'follow the medium': rather than importing offline methods like the survey onto the web, the analyst learns what the medium already counts, ranks, and recommends, and turns those native operations into research instruments.	Actor-Network Theory analysis treats society and technology as a single woven fabric, mapping how heterogeneous human and non-human actors—engineers, scallops, documents, machines, regulators—are linked into networks through a process of translation. Rather than explaining technical outcomes by appeal to pre-given social categories, ANT follows the actors themselves and describes how durable arrangements are assembled, stabilised, and sometimes undone.