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The Other Side of Resilience to Terrorism pp 33–50Cite as

Research Design and Methodological Matters

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Abstract

This chapter analyses the design of the research project and the methodological matters that emerged before and during the phases of the investigation.

The theoretical background on the relation between terrorism and resilience from a socio-anthropological perspective of public health has been considered to determine the methodological framework, the techniques and the methods selected.

Due to the complexity of the research issue and its methodological implications, it was decided to consider a multi-method approach, giving a comprehensive insight of the different social groups and data collected for the analysis.

For this reason and for the methodological implications encountered during the research itself, the methods and techniques developed are the following: a literature review on the research topics; a secondary data analysis considering the information collected from different sources such as journalistic accounts, public policy reports, blogs, online forums and specific websites; interviews with the experts on terrorism, security entities, public order entities, immigration laws, civil protection organizations and crisis management organizations working in the city of Milan; sociological observations; and photograph collections; furthermore, an online ethnography has been conducted to enhance the understanding of residents’ perceptions of the terrorism threats and, above all, the related issues. This last method appears to be one of the most relevant methodologies to study the perception of security by the migrants living in Milan.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The social and anthropological dimensions and categories considered for the virtual ethnography are the same as those used for the real observations. Please see Appendix B.

  2. 2.

    For the full script of the interview with the experts, see Appendix A.

  3. 3.

    For the full outline of the interview with the migrants , see Appendix C.

  4. 4.

    For a full reading of the outline of the social observations, see Appendix B. The social observations took place from December 2015 to December 2016. Milan City map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1sVrHQHaXovW94BrQ3pIzTZLMDqQ&hl=it&ll=45.46115373966483%2C9.170025500000065&z=12.

  5. 5.

    The full list of the Facebook pages of the selected neighbourhoods in the nine districts is provided at the end of the References.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITSTIME, Department of Sociology, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

    Barbara Lucini

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Lucini, B. (2017). Research Design and Methodological Matters. In: The Other Side of Resilience to Terrorism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56943-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56943-7_4

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