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The strength of these methods comes from their capacity to take advantage of the data and computational capacities of online platforms; their weakness comes from the difficulty to separate the phenomena that they investigate from the features of the media in which they manifest (\u2018the medium is the message\u2019, according to McLuhan\u2019s 1964 dictum). In this article, we discuss various methodological difficulties deriving from the lack of separation between medium and message and propose eight practical precautions to deal with it. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444818769236","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,4,20]],"date-time":"2018-04-20T10:54:18Z","timestamp":1524221658000},"page":"4195-4217","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":67,"title":["A reality check(list) for digital methods"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0004-5308","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tommaso","family":"Venturini","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Lyon, Lyon, France"}]},{"given":"Liliana","family":"Bounegru","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Ghent University, Belgium; University of Groningen, The Netherlands"}]},{"given":"Jonathan","family":"Gray","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"King\u2019s College London, UK"}]},{"given":"Richard","family":"Rogers","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,4,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-1461444818769236","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Agre PE (1994) Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy. 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