Query Design

What makes up good query design?

1. **Keyword Selection: Choose keywords that are relevant, specific, and representative of the research topic. Keywords should capture the essence of the research question and align with the objectives of the study.
2. Communities: Know what community/scene/demographic you are researching and what their ingroup communication patters and keywords are. For cross-cultural research, compare results of the same query in different languages and domains to understand variations in societal concerns and perspectives across regions.
3. Programmes, Anti-programmes, Neutrality: Consider keywords as parts of programmes, anti-programmes, or efforts at neutrality. This approach allows researchers to study trends, commitments, and alignments between different actors.
4. Specificity, Differentiation and Ambiguity: Be specific in the language used in queries to differentiate between different concepts or terms. Specific language helps in distinguishing between different entities and avoids grouping them together. While unambiguous queries are clear and direct, ambiguous queries can also be valuable in teasing out differences and hierarchies of societal concerns across cultures. Ambiguous queries can provide insights into dominant voices and alignments in research.
5. Search query definitions: Know the specifics of writing a query for your targeted platform, for example quotation marks in Google, which specify exact terms in queries, or a dash to exclude a term.
6. Awareness of Artefacts: Be mindful of platform artefacts and properties in search results. Consider whether to highlight or remove these artefacts based on their relevance to the research question and the potential impact on the findings.

See also

Rogers, Richard: Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design. In: Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es (Hg.): The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2017, S. 75–94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/12536.