Add to ORKGThe enormous growth in online activities has created all sorts of new opportunities for research. These opportunities are theoretical as well as methodological. The theoretical opportunities have been present in prior chapters but never emphasized; this chapter brings theory into focus without losing sight of methods. Specifically, the chapter discusses the explanatory power of theory based on online methodologies to address important social issues. Using this goal it describes three themes common to the preceding chapters: the volume of data, additional computer resources, and the ‘qualitative analysis bottleneck’. Each theme presents problems as well as opportunities, and the goal of this chapter is to explore how methods and theory work ...