Compare methods

	Infrastructure Studies	Digital Methods
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1996	2013
Originator	Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, Karen Ruhleder	Richard Rogers, Amsterdam Digital Methods Initiative
Type	Qualitative method for studying relational infrastructure	Empirical research approach for online data
Seminal source	Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111-134.	Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262018838
Aliases	Infrastructural inversion, Ecology of infrastructure, Study of boundary objects	Follow the medium, Natively digital research, Web epistemology methods
Related	4	4
Summary	The infrastructure studies method, developed by Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, and Karen Ruhleder, studies the normally invisible relational systems—standards, classifications, pipes, protocols, and installed bases—on which modern life silently depends. Its signature move is 'infrastructural inversion': deliberately foregrounding the background, treating the taken-for-granted substrate as the object of analysis, and reading its standards, classifications, and breakdowns to understand how it shapes work, knowledge, and lives.	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.