The Uses of Networking for Promoting Sociological Research

Abstract

This article describes an initiative to incorporate the Internet into the sociology curriculum of a behavioral sciences department in Israel. The original plan of the project included running a small pilot course for the first year and introducing a large, semi-required, course in the following year. The agenda of the course treated the Internet as a source of raw data (content analysis of chats, of newspapers' headlines, data archives, etc.), as a source of processed data (official statistics), and a source of theoretical information (academic databases). Even though the pilot course confirmed the feasibility of the project, implementation of the semi-required course was blocked. A system approach, including the setting, the audiences (colleagues and students), and the course itself, is used to explain the unsatisfactory outcome.