‘Couldn't You Have Got a Computer Program to Do That for You?’ Reflections on the Impact that Machines Have on the Ways We Think About and Undertake Qualitative Research in the Socio-Legal Community

This article addresses the role that computer software programs play in the sort of textual analysis that has typically been the preserve of the qualitative researcher. Drawing on two distinct research projects conducted separately by the authors, it considers the transformation of social science software from a competent assistant that can help to sort and retrieve data, to an intelligent assistant capable of independently finding trends and counter-arguments, to a co-investigator capable of doing things that human researchers cannot. In addition to challenging some of the claims of ‘siliconistas’, this article considers the impact of new technology on the aesthetics of research and the professional identity of qualitative researchers. In doing so, it raises some important questions about how well we are training early-career academics for the challenges that they are likely to face in the future world of socio-legal empirical research.