Contemporary digital society has become a critical agent for transformation in various spheres of life and a new methodological framework for interdisciplinary research. It has emerged as a parallel entity alongside conventional society, where an individual's membership is not only limited to the physical world but also extends to the digital realm. In fact, a person's membership in the physical world is incomplete without their connection to the digital society. Digital technology is instrumental in driving social transformations in areas such as the economy, politics, culture, and religion. The striking feature of digital society is digital data production in the form of big data. Unlike in a conventional society, people's every move and behavior in a digital society are calculated and recorded as data. In this global context of a digital society, India has created opportunities for digitalization for its people since 2000, with significant strides made between 2015 and 2016. Reliance Jio, a telecom company, helped to accelerate this process by offering free unlimited Internet packages on a mass scale. This led to a tremendous surge in service industries and the emergence of new sectors, as well as a digital revolution in the conventional systems of the economy, politics, culture, education, religion, and law. However, this transformation has also exposed a significant challenge—the digital divide or digital inequalities, which cannot be overlooked or undermined in sociological research. It would be wrong to reduce digital inequality to a mere technological divide; it is a complex issue shaped by prevailing socioeconomic conditions, digital inequalities, and capability inequality. The study revealed that India's prevailing socioeconomic divide is the source of its wide digital divide. This digital divide exists across both rural and urban areas, affecting access to digital education and economic opportunities. The digital divide is also found between under-resourced urban areas and affluent residential areas. This study's theoretical framework draws on the studies of Castell on the information society and Dijk's concept of the network society.

This study explores the limitations and benefits of different approaches to conducting online focus groups and illustrates an online focus group protocol used within the Value for Schools project in Italy. According to the project evaluation design, 13 online focus groups were organized, with the participation of 101 teachers and 37 school principals. The protocol setup, incorporation, and reorganization of the indications have been discussed in the literature, addressing the methodological and practical issues, such as the selection of participants and preliminary communication with them; the web conference platform (Zoom Business); timing, as well as access times and mode; the roles of the researchers involved (moderator, co-host technical assistant, co-host-observer, co-host-animator) and their integration spaces; technological support; and animation tools. The recording and transcription tools and subsequent analysis of the textual corpus are presented. Finally, the authors discuss the validation and reliability of online focus group protocols.

Introduction: This article aims to investigate the potential impact of restricted social data access on digital research practices. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the exploitation of Facebook user data for speculative purposes and led to the end of the so-called “Data Golden Age,” characterized by free access to social media user data. As a result, many social platforms have limited or entirely banned data access. This policy shift, referred to as the “APIcalypse,” has revolutionized digital research methods.

Methods: To address the impact of this policy shift on digital research, a non-probabilistic sample of Italian researchers was surveyed and the responses were analyzed. The survey was designed to explore how constraints on digital data access have altered research practices, whether we are truly in a post-API era with a radical change in data scraping strategies, and what shared and sustainable solutions can be identified for the post-API scenario.

Results: The findings highlight how limits on social data access have not yet created a “post-Api” scenario as expected, but it is turning research practices upside down, positively and negatively. On the positive side, because researchers are experimenting with innovative forms of scraping. Negatively, because there could be a “mass migration” to the few platforms that freely grant their APIs, with critical consequences for the quality of research.

Discussion: The closure of many social media APIs has not opened up a post-API world, but has worsened the conditions of making research, which is increasingly oriented to “easy-data” environments such as Twitter. This should prompt digital researchers to make a self-reflexive effort to diversify research platforms and especially to act ethically with user data. It would also be important for the scientific world and large platforms to enter into understandings for open and conscious sharing of data in the name of scientific progress.