Relevance & Research Question: Since 1997, the GOR has developed from a workshop in German language to Europe’s most important international conference concerning the field of online research. GOR is an interdisciplinary conference series with researchers from different academic backgrounds. But: Little is known about the improvement and expansion of online research within social science: How have topics changed during time? Are there any specific research trends? Has online research become international and interdisciplinary? With this paper, we want to shed light to these questions.
Methods & Data: We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all abstracts written for GOR conferences from 1997 to 2009 (N=950). The texts are publicly available via an online archive. 4 coder had to differentiate between the methodological aspects of each paper, research instruments used, the kind of data collection (online vs. offline) and the focus of the research question (quantitative vs. qualitative). Additionally some variables of the first authors (status, organization, nationality, discipline) were categorized. A sample of ca. 7% of all texts were coded twice, reliability was calculated for each variable.
Results: We identified some typical profiles of topics and first authors which describe the research field. Furthermore we display some time frames: In the early years online research was focused on methodological questions, later on several online occurrences like weblogs or Twitter. Besides: GOR has become more and more international. During the last years, about a third of the GOR participants are not from Germany. They come mainly from Western Europe, but as well from Eastern Europe and the US.
Added Value: The analysis shows the progress and maturity of the interdisciplinary research field “online research” in Central Europe. We identified some aspects which could advice researchers in the future: the transparency of sampling and the exactness of the summarizing abstracts.