To research online or not to research online : using internet-based research in Islamic Studies context

Indonesia is the largest Muslim country and the eighth largest Internet user in the world. Around 78 million people in Indonesia use the Internet in their daily lives. This provides new opportunities for Islamic education institutions and Muslim scholars to utilise this online space as a new research setting. Non-Islamic education institutions and scholars have utilised the Internet as a new avenue to conduct research, while Islamic education institutions and Muslim scholars have yet to make use of online space for research purposes. While dakwah, education and other Islamic social phenomena are being practiced on online platforms, Muslim scholars are yet to go online to understand this phenomenon. This paper addresses why Islamic institutions and Muslim scholars should go online and utilise the Internet as a new setting in their research agenda. This paper offers researchers at Islamic institutions the opportunity to consider new data collection and triangulation strategies to enhance their research output and paradigm. The paper’s discussion focuses on both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Some benefits of using social media in a research setting are discussed. Evidence that supports reIndonesian Journal of Islam and Muslim Societies Vol. 7, no.1 (2017), pp. 31-54, doi : 10.18326/ijims.v7i1.31-54


Introduction
The emergence of computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as the Internet, has enabled a more interactive and collaborative kind of human interaction across the globe.Internet-based technologies are expanding and changing at an exponential rate.From business to education, young people to elders, world powers to third world countries, secu-lar scholars to religious scholars-all have felt the impact of the web.The use of Internet-based data has become widespread in many academic fields (especially health research and education), Web-based techniques are becoming routine in the practice and study of politics, and online commercial and market research has become a billion-dollar industry. 1his online sphere has encouraged researchers, whether quantitative or qualitative, to expand their data gathering approaches2 .However, non-Islamic institutions and researchers have taken more advantage of this online setting in their research practices than their Islamic counterparts.Quantitative researchers, for example, frequently gather data through web surveys3 and emails4 , while qualitative researchers gather data through online content analysis coding 5 and online interviews 6 .
Online research methods have developed quickly in response to rapid social and technological changes 7 .However, there is very limited use of Internet research to study Islamic issues, which is especially surprising given the extent to which Muslim scholars have traditionally been innovators in developing and refining data collection techniques that may be applied in every Islamic research context.The theoretical and online research foundations in the Islamic context have not kept pace with the growth and use of technology within the Muslim community.
Despite the seemingly widespread diffusion and use of the Internet in Muslim communities, Muslim scholars have yet to develop a clear understanding of the impact these technologies have had on our life and our research paradigm.Internet use throughout various aspects of Muslim life has increased significantly, for example in dakwah8 , education 9 , economics 10 and politics 11 .Nevertheless, researchers within Islamic education institutions are yet to utilise this online space for their research.Most researchers in Islamic education institutions are mainly focused on gathering data through conventional methods such as interviews 12 , focus groups 13 , and ethnographic studies 14 .
A continued failure to utilise online space for research may result in poor research paradigms and reduced output of Islamic knowledge and development, given that more and more Islam-related issues are available online rather than offline.Muslim lives and activities are become more digitalised as Muslim individuals, groups, businesses and other Muslim organizations practice their activities in the online world.This phenomenon has created a new setting known as "online space", which produces rich data and insights to be studied whether through a quantitative or qualitative approach.
The author believes that practicing Internet-based research in an Islamic studies context can deepen our understanding and allow triangulation in a topic being studied.The objective of the present study is to provide reasons for researchers under Islamic institutions to practice research in online spaces, as well as to provide insights on how this online space can be used in an Islamic research context.Accordingly, in this study, the author will answer the following research questions: Should researchers in Islamic education institutions use the Internet for new research settings?How can the Internet be used as a new research setting in an Islamic context?
The structure of this paper is as follows: the next section presents a literature review.Following the literature review section, the methodology used to write this paper is discussed, which is then followed by results and discussion.The conclusion is presented before the limitations of the research and some avenues for future study are presented in the final section.

Literature review
The World Wide Web has become a crucial part of modern life since its emergence, due to its ability to facilitate communication and structure contemporary society 15 .People are able to interact and collaborate in an efficient and effective manner via various Internet platforms.The Internet also became the most powerful harbinger of social change the world has ever seen 16 .In this study, the World Wide Web/Internet is understood as a techno-social system through which humans interact based on technological networks 17 .
The first World Wide Web was created in the 1990s in a lab at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland by Tim Berners-Lee and his team.The aim was to set the agenda for far-reaching transformations in the political sphere, in economies everywhere, in social interaction, and even in conceptions of our own identity 18 .The World Wide Web (commonly known as "the web") is the most prominent part of the Internet that can be used to facilitate human interaction through technological networks 19 .The Internet has been improved significantly since it was created, as we can experience today.
The arrival of the new generation of the Internet has supported the emergence of various communication and collaboration applications such as email and social media sites.These applications help people to connect with others and communicate in a virtual space.Most activities which were previously practiced face to face have moved into online space.People no longer need to spend time in the same space to communicate, interact and collaborate.Due to its interactivity, Internet has become part of societal and organisational life.
The Internet has been used by the Muslim community for many purposes.For example, Internet can be used to facilitate social relationships through online communication such as emails and social media platforms.
Social media platforms are believed to be useful to facilitate social relationships and thus increase humans' satisfaction with their lives 20 . McKenna,et al. argue that those who better express their true selves over the Internet were more likely than others to have formed close online relationships and moved these friendships to a face-to-face basis 21 .

Internet-based research paradigm
Internet-based research has been occurring since the inception of ARPANET (the precursor of the current Internet) in the 1960s.More formal uses of the Internet for learning were established in the 1980s with the formation of moderated newsgroups 22 .In 1986, researchers first undertook an online survey, which was then followed by the first methodological discussion of online interviewing in 1994.One year later, in 1995, researchers began to conduct Internet ethnographies and the first online web experiment 23 .
However, it is important to differentiate between research which examines the Internet and research which uses the Internet as a tool.Online research methods are obviously useful when the phenomenon under investigation is strongly linked with the Internet.In Internet-based research, participants access a specially-designed web page containing a survey or questionnaires to complete 24 .Meanwhile, research which examines the Internet is understood as that which studies a variety of Internet phenomena.However, while online technology use has been rampant within the Muslim community, few Muslim scholars undertake their research using online tools.The technology for online research is young and evolving.Until recently, creating and conducting online research was considered a time-consuming task requiring familiarity with web authoring programs, HTML code and scripting programs.Since then, thousands of groups and organisations have moved online, many of them aggressively promoting their presence through the use of search engines, email lists and banner advertisements.These organisations not only offer information to consumers, they also present opportunities for researchers to access a variety of populations who are affiliated with these groups 25 .
According to Wright, benefits of online research include access to unique populations, time saving and cost reduction 26 .A researcher also has the opportunity to contact and invite respondents in multiple ways, save responses to partially completed surveys, and send out periodic reminders to complete the survey 27 .Some scholars argue that online research could limit researchers' ability to glean information from verbal and oral phenomena such as gestures and auditory data.However, there is ample evidence to suggest that online users compensate textually for missing auditory and gestural cues, and that online phenomena can be richly expressive 28 .Herring adds that as people practice "doing things" online, and that "doing things' becomes online discourse and behaviour, in which researchers are required to study this behaviour with a variety of methods such as surveys, interviews, ethnographic observation, or other methods through quantitative or qualitative analysis 29 .
Research in online space can be carried out qualitatively, such as through observation of text discourse phenomena, or quantitatively, such as by coding and counting phenomena and summarising the relative frequencies produced.Online spaces allow researchers to understand human discourse behaviour, which includes a range of topics as outlined in Table 1.mainly focused on current online technology usage such as in education, dakwah and other social aspects.
Meanwhile, the analysis of Islamic studies using Internet-based research literature focuses on how the Internet was used in various Islamic studies (qualitative and quantitative).For example, how content analysis (such as of texts, photos, discussions and postings) and observation (of users) were practiced in Islamic Internet-based research.Some advantages of using the Internet as a research setting for Islamic studies were also extracted from the literature.
The data was, then, analysed using a thematic approach 32 .Content analysis is a systematic technique for coding symbolic content (text, images, etc.) found in communication, especially their structural features (e.g.message length, distribution of certain text or image components) and semantic themes 33 .The results were presented based on the themes that emerged and the different ways the Internet is used in various Islamic studies by Muslim scholars and organizations.

Internet adoption and use by Muslim
According to Internet World Statistics, about 3.36 billion (46 percent) of the world population use Internet today, 1.6 billion of whom live on the continent of Asia 34 .This number is increasing significantly every year due to improvements in technology infrastructure, regulation, and government policies.The Western population has adopted and incorporated the Internet into every aspect of life earlier than the Asian and African populations; however, Asian countries are experiencing considerably higher Internet adoption and use in the last few years due to economic development.Most muslim population live in Asia continent countries, such as Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and these countries are high internet adoption and use.
For example, Indonesia is the eighth largest Internet user in the world 35 .The number of citizens who have access to the Internet has increased significantly from year to year.According to Asia World Stats, the number of Internet subscribers in Indonesia sits at around 78 million, or about 30.5% of the Indonesian population.As around 85 per cent of the Indonesian population are Muslim, this means that about 62.5 million Indonesian Internet users are Muslim.This phenomenon provides a great opportunity for all Muslim scholars to investigate Muslim Internet adopters and users for research purposes.

Internet-based research for Islamic research settings
Even though Internet-based research in the Islamic context is new and very limited, some notable examples can be found.This research, which has been carried out in various fields of Islamic studies, presents very good output and excellent academic insight which clearly contributes to Muslim life and the improvement of knowledge.Some of those studies are presented in the following Table 2.In Table 2 above we can see that a number of potential Islamic issues can be studied online.Those areas of study can potentially contribute to the wellbeing of the Muslim community and the development of academic knowledge.These areas are summarized in Table 3 below.
Table 3. Potential areas to be studied online 1.Data can be automatically generated using certain software such as ConStrat's proprietary V X, Graph API, and Technorati.comsoftware.
2. Quick way to study more respondents or informants over the internet, and more questionnaires can also be distributed to them.
3. Wide range of textual and media content generated by users.Online data is comprised mainly of text, links, and graphics, but web pages have added sound, animations, and video; they have also incorporated user interface, user content, and user-user interactivity features.
4. Enables online coding for qualitative researchers.5. Enables objective, systematic, and quantitative or qualitative description of the content of Internet communication.
6.A computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) survey can be administered.
7. Enables online direct coding from informants' personal online pages.
8. Data may be gathered from different online sites, which enables researchers to compare similarities and differences on data.9. Help researchers to contact "hard to reach" populations across difficult regions, without being limited by geography and time, through virtual survey or interviews.
10. Enable researchers to apply online experimental strategies.
11. Unlimited or continual access to information sources.For example, users can be tracked over time at multiple times or base time segmentation (weekly, monthly, daily).

Internet-based research for triangulation and enhancing understanding
Certain Internet-based research can be used to validate and strengthen conventional research results.For example, a researcher may conduct conventional interviews (such as face-to-face interviews) to gather data and then validate this data in an online space.More specifically, a re-searcher might conduct face-to-face interviews with Muslim scholars or clerics and then observe their social media sites to validate their perspectives regarding certain issues.
This strategy might strengthen or enhance the face-to-face interview results because the face-to-face interview process can sometimes put participants under pressure, whether due to time limitations or because participants are made nervous by direct contact with the researcher.This pressure could cause the participant to say something which might be inaccurate.As a result, conventional interview sessions may reflect "a very artificial situation" 66 because participants may try to please the researchers in order to end the interview sooner.This may also lead to a lack of descriptive validity or factual accuracy of the research topic being explored, as what participants say may not reflect reality.
As a result, the author argues that participants express their opinion freely in online space because they do not feel watched by researchers as they do in conventional research.For example, Carson found in his study that data drawn from online spaces was more representative of the real thoughts and feelings of the participants 67 .As the research subjects are not confronted by face-to-face interaction with researchers and time limitations (for example, in an offline context a researcher usually exerts significant power in their engagement with a participant, which can leave participants with little room to express ideas), their opinions and thoughts are expressed more freely.This allows researchers to observe the phenomena in a more natural setting, which will become a foundation to the integrity of the observation in an Islamic research process. 67Dean Carson, "The `blogosphere' as a market research tool for tourism destinations: A case study of Australia's Northern Territory", Journal of Vacation Marketing, Volume 14,  Number 2 (2008), 111-119.only enables triangulation but also deepens understanding of a topic being studied by Muslim scholars.

Conclusions
As a conclusion for this paper, the author strongly recommends that Muslim researchers and education institutions extend their research setting to include online space.A number of reasons have been discussed above.However, to clearly justify the argument and answer the research questions, the author would like to address the key reasons why Muslim scholars should conduct Internet-based research: 1) A number of Muslim individuals and institutions have intensively practiced their activities in online space: for example dakwah, e-commerce, education, social and economic activities; 2) The number of Internet users in Indonesia is increasing sharply from year to year, and 85 percent of Indonesians are Muslim.This will require new approaches from Muslim researchers to investigate the phenomena in order to increase our understanding and contribution; 3) There are a number of benefits to be gained by Muslim researchers when they conduct research online, such as the variety of types and wide range of data, scalability of informants, less time and cost, as well as reduced risk when a research is conducted among religious and socially sensitive groups.
The author also recommended that all Islamic education institutions redesign and develop research approaches in their research method curriculum.There is an urgent call for Islamic education institutions to incorporate online space in their research.This may result in more validity and more trustworthy data.Finally, the online space may become a new foundation of research to improve integrity, because more data from different sources and environments are available.
This study has some limitations and issues that need to be addressed in further research.The data was generated from online and offline literature and has yet to be tested empirically.However, this study was carried out using scientific methodology to contribute to new knowledge and perspectives in research paradigms and development.The author expects Islamic education institutions and scholars to employ Internetbased research in their Islamic research practices such as education, dakwah, communication, Islamic businesses, politics, etc.As a result, Islamic institutions and scholars would improve both Muslim communities' wellbeing and their research paradigms.Future research should focus on testing the ideas of this paper in empirical settings.This can be done through a qualitative single case study or survey.Empirical studies would improve this conceptual paper.

Table 1 .
Online discourse behaviour that can be studied This study was carried out through an extensive review of seminal journals in Islamic studies using Internet-based research, information technology, and research method literature.The author also used other online data such as web-based page analysis 31 to identify the current phenomena of Internet use among the Muslim community.The analysis of websites 29 Susan C. Herring, "Computer-Mediated Discourse"…, 343. 30Susan C. Herring, "Computer-Mediated Discourse"…, 361. 31 Darcy Haag Granello and Joe E. Wheaton, "Online Data Collection: Strategies for Research", Journal of Counseling & Development, Volume 82, Number 4 (2004), 387-393.

Table 2 .
Example of Internet-Based Research in the Islamic Context 37 Nadirsyah Hosen, "Online Fatwa in Indonesia: From Fatwa Shopping to Googling a Kiai", in G. Fealy & S. White (Eds.),Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, Wollongong: University of Wollongong, 2008, 159-173.