7 Ways NVivo Helps Researchers Handle Social Media Data

Kathleen McNiff is a blogger with QSR International, the people that brought you NVivo. Get in touch with Kath on Twitter @KMcNiff.


Imagine you’re sitting on a qualitative goldmine—in-depth interviews, focus groups, intriguing survey results, nuanced observations and a comprehensive lit review.

 All the traditional boxes are ticked and yet there’s the nagging feeling that something is missing. 

Chances are, it’s social media—and that’s probably why you’re here.

 

The Challenges

There are so many impassioned and revealing conversations taking place online that it’s becoming harder (and more dangerous) to ignore them. 

But embracing social media is not straightforward and you may be grappling with questions such as:

 

• How do I build social media into my research design?
• What platforms are worth concentrating on?
• How should I collect the data?
• What tools and methods should I use to analyse it?

NVivo gives you a practical way to face these challenges.

 

NCapture the web

If you already work with NVivo, you’ll know that it’s a tool for organizing and analyzing qualitative data—but you may not realise that NVivo 10 for Windows comes with a raft of features to support your foray into the brave new world of social media.

 

It all starts with NCapture.

 

This small but powerful plugin sits quietly at the top of your browser (Internet Explorer or Chrome) and lets you capture web pages and social media—and then bring them into NVivo for analysis. It’s a bit like that helpful elephant from Evernote.

You can also capture YouTube videos and conversations from Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This is a boon for researchers who want to facilitate ‘online focus groups’ using these social media platforms—as well as for those who want to get a well-rounded view of their topic by following the latest conversations.

 This brief video (with lovely music) shows you how to gather Twitter data using NCapture:
 

If you use NVivo 10 for Mac—stay tuned, because NCapture is coming soon.

Now, let’s focus on 7 ways NVivo helps you to make sense of your social media data.

 

#1: Gather tweets or posts in a dataset

 

You can search for tweets in your browser and then use NCapture to pull them into a PDF or dataset. The dataset it especially handy because you can filter or sort the content—and use tools to slice and dice the data in different ways.

 

You can do the same for discussions and posts from Facebook or LinkedIn—on these platforms, you can also use the biographical data from user profiles to compare attitudes (men vs women, young vs old—that kind of thing).

 

Sometimes you have to work around the limitations of a particular platform. For example, the number of tweets you can capture is determined by Twitter and can vary depending on the vagaries of Twitter traffic. To follow a particular topic over time, the best approach is to take captures at periodic intervals.

If you want to know more about the inner workings of Twitter—there is a fantastic post right here on NSMNSS blog.

#2: Visualize the most frequently used words

 

You can run a Word Frequency query to see which words contributors are using most often—this can help you get a handle on the themes in your social media data.

 

Visualizing the results in a word cloud may spark insights and reveal connections—they can also liven up a presentation, final paper or blog post.

 

#3: Map the location of tweets or posts

 

You can open a map to see where the action is—and then use this as a launching point for further investigation. For example, you could click on a pin to see the tweets or posts from a particular location.

 

 

#4: Chart users by the number of followers

Shares, likes and follows are the new social currency and they can help to inform your research. If you’re exploring Twitter users - you can create a chart to compare the numbers:

#5: Organize the content into themes

 

You know that qualitative goldmine I mentioned earlier? Well, you can bring the whole thing into NVivo 10 for Windows (including your newly NCaptured social media data) and use ‘coding’ to organize it into themes.

 

For example, whenever you see a reference to ‘education’—whether it be in an interview, article or social media conversation—you can select the content and code it at a ‘node’. Then you can open the node (which is a fancy word for container) and explore all the references to ‘education’ in one place.

 

Coding is a great way to wrangle the chaos of qualitative data—and it’s slightly addictive.

#6: Explore by username or hashtag

 

Do you want to gather tweets from a particular user or hashtag? If your tweets are in a dataset, then ‘auto coding’ is your answer. You can easily roll up the tweets to coding collections by username, by hashtag (what did everyone say about #NSMNSS?), or even by location.

 

Speaking of hashtags - why not start your own twitter chat to gather feedback about an issue or idea?

 

#7: Press the ‘Analyze This’ button

 

Can’t find it?

That’s because, as awesome as NVivo is, it won’t do the analysis for you.

 

Don’t fret because you’ll find plenty of tools for querying the data as well as ways of organizing your own analytical insights (including memos, annotations, models and framework matrices).

Explore the possibilities

Social media has opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities for qualitative research—but you needn’t be overwhelmed because NVivo provides a safe to place to put the box while you explore its contents.

 

Maybe you’re already using NVivo to analyze your social media data?
 

 

Share how you are using NCapture in a short blog post by emailing NSMNSS@natcen.ac.uk

 

 

Exhausted, intrigued and all about social media!

Kelsey Beninger is a researcher at NatCen Social Research and can be contacted through Twitter @KBeninger.

Attending two conferences related to social media the past three days took me on a long journey, and not just from the 6 train rides, nonexistent mobile reception or from navigating my way around overly complex campus layouts! My journey also included the reflection on different approaches to talking about social media research and the need, now more than ever, to be transparent about what we do, why we do it and what is wrong with our approaches (because we aren’t perfect- it’s too early days!).

At the European Conference on Social Media in Brighton I was fortunate to meet and learn from some of the people from the 35 different countries represented. While I wont shy away from saying that I think the strongly academic focus was a wee bit theoretical for my applied social policy mind, I did learn about very different types of projects, from e-health platforms in Lithuania and online civic participation in Egypt and Malaysia, to keynotes including the evolution of social media and the feasibility of moving knowledge cafes to the online space.

The enthusiasm and excitement for social media was palpable throughout the conference and inspired hope for future innovations. I wondered, though, about how presentations I attended focused more so on the research outcome- the findings. What lacked was clarity on what means led to the end- the design and methodology. Indeed this emerged in discussions with participants who were also student supervisors. A reoccurring theme was what theory should I tell my kids to use who are wanting to use social media in their dissertation? Or, what’s the best tool, the best approach? What issues do my students need to be aware of from the beginning? There are no right answers but, yes, it would be quite handy to have an idea of the approaches, tools, considerations and adjustments researchers have used to succeed in their work so we can inform future work.

I led a roundtable on just this, one of just two roundtables in two full days of lectures. I was a bit worried there wouldn’t be dialogue but participants quickly opened up about challenges they are facing and it very much echoed the work we at @NatCen and @NSMNSS have been doing this year (see this post and this one too). Challenges of distinguishing between what is legal or allowed with research using social media brought an engaging debate amongst attendees to the roundtable. This provoked alot of discussion as some attendees initially viewed this point in black and white before the discussion turned to the grey area perceived by social media users- while T&Cs of a platform or country digital technology laws may make the use of data for research legal, the expectations of some users view it as the moral obligation of a researcher to still gain consent or anonymise data.

Also flagged up was the difficulty of defining social media (by far the most heated topic!), knowing what questions to ask to know what to do next in your design, how to sample ‘properly’ online, understanding big data collection tools and their weaknesses. Yet none of this came up in the other sessions of the day that I attended. The session may have left some people feeling at a loss for solutions and I believe that it is ok to not have a strict answer. What the session made obvious for me was the importance of researchers talking, sharing, questioning. Without more of that, then research will stagnate and researchers will get complacent.

The Research Methods Festival in Oxford was equally diverse and engaging, yet provided what I felt was missing from the ECSM2014- the methods! I presented at and attended a panel on the opportunities and challenges of social media research (See slides here) and it was so refreshing to have all people in the room be open and honest about what they can and can’t do with their research. @Donna_Peach of @SocPHD discussed how she created a community of practice on twitter and on a website, sharing examples of collaboration between different groups. The guys at CASM discussed Natural Language Processing and shared a great discrete example that even my teeny mind can comprehend! COSMOS also gave us a sneak peak of their new platform. I was intrigued about the Visual Media Lab discussed by Farida Vis, a new collaboration with the aim of tapping into the visual data online (often overlooked for the text that is more commonly the focus of research).

 Basically there is one moral to my ramblings: as a researcher don’t be afraid to bare your research design soul. Without more of that how can the field persevere and innovate, gain credibility from the skeptics and avoid reinventing the wheel?

Check out #ECSM2014 and #RFM14 twitter feeds for a roundup of both conferences.

 Papers and slides from ESRC Research Methods Festival 2014 are here: http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/RMF2014/programme/session.php?id=E8

Review the sessions at European Conference on Social Media 2014: http://academic-conferences.org/ecsm/ecsm2015/ecsm15-timetable.htm

Why I love online interview research

Janet Salmons is a network member and a contributing expert to the online team. 

There are nearly as many kinds of research approaches as there are questions to study. While it is the task of the researcher to match approach to question, it is clear that some researchers simply prefer one approach over another, and select types of questions that permit them to carry out the inquiry in the preferred way. I admit it, I am guilty. While I see the value in all sorts of studies, I would not be content to crunch Big Data, even if it meant I could generate impressive maps and diagrams. I want to learn about their experiences first hand. I want to know why. Why did you make that choice and not another, why was it important to you, why do you plan to do things differently in the future? I cannot ask an extant mountain of Big Data to tell me more.

Online interviews allow researchers to pose questions in a variety of ways with participants anywhere, at any time. In synchronous interviews we can capture the immediacy and emotion of the moment, and when we click on the webcam to video conference we can have a dynamic exchange that is close to being there in person. We can traipse around a virtual world together or share a desktop or application, and discuss what we are experiencing. Or we can use a whiteboard to diagram and draw perceptions of the phenomena. With flexible asynchronous emails we can create an extended narrative correspondence or text message on the go, and ask participants to share their observations on site-- perhaps even relaying pictures or maps back to us.  It can be a rich exchange!

And yet, as always in scholarly research there are more issues and requirements to be considered including rigour, ethics, and methodological alignment. There is also the all-important acceptance by dissertation chairs and ethics boards, editors and peer reviewers. To add to the challenge, many of those who would hold the study’s fate in their hands are not familiar or comfortable with online methods.

Resources and upcoming events

To help researchers navigate these matters and create well-designed, coherent studies that merit approval, I have been focusing my attention on the development of design approaches for online interview methods. I created the “E-Interview Research Framework,” a holistic, systems-thinking set of guiding questions and models (Salmons, 2012, 2015). My new book from Sage Publications, Qualitative Online Interviews, is organized using this Framework.

To celebrate the May book release I am organizing an interactive, global online multi-platform extravaganza of free webinars, discussions and tweetchats about using e-interviews in research and teaching online methods. In addition to NSMNSS, SCoPE, e/merge Africa and IT4All are offering opportunities to learn together and exchange ideas. You are invited!

SCoPE, an online community interested in technology, educational research and practice, will host events from May 1 to 16, and additional events will be offered throughout the summer. Visit SCoPE at http://bit.ly/1i7W73j for free registration, webinar log-in information and related resources. Follow @einterview for updates.

Save the dates

Asynchronous Discussion Forum May 2-16:

·         Teaching Digital Qualitative Interview Methods

·         Designing an (Approvable) Study with Digital Qualitative Interview Methods

·         Open Discussion and Q & A

Webinars, May 5 and 12, and June 7:

·         Monday, May 5, 2014 at 17:00:00 Fair and Good? Ethics and Quality in Online Interview Research

·         Monday, May 12, 2014 at 17:00:00  See, Share, Create: Visual E-Interviews

·         Saturday, June 7, 2014 at 15:00 Online Interviews for Active Online Learning

NSMNSS Tweetchat, May 8:

·         Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 14:00:00  5 Tips for Teaching E-Interview Methods. Follow @NSMNSS and include #NSMNSS in all your tweets.

e/merge Africa Events,
July 21-25: Details TBA

Digital Sociology PhD/ECR Workshop @ Goldsmiths University of London February 19th 2014

Are you a PhD student or Early Career Researcher doing work in digital sociology? The BSA Digital Sociology Group has organised a PhD/ECR Workshop where a limited number of participants can get feedback on their work from peers and established academics in a supportive environment.

The event will take place between 11am to 4pm on February 19th at Goldsmiths College in South London. Confirmed academic respondents are Emma Uprichard (Warwick) and Noortje Marres (Goldsmiths) with one or two more TBC soon.

If you would like to register then please e-mail mark@markcarrigan.net with a short bio and 200 to 300 word abstract. The exact format of the day hasn’t been finalised yet but the intention will be to allow substantial time for discussion of each presentation so places will be extremely limited.

Reserve your spot now! Final Knowledge Exchange Seminar on 15 March

Dear NSMNSS members,

We're delighted to invite you to the next set of free NSMNSS network activities:

■  We will be holding our final Knowledge Exchange Seminar, hosted at NatCen Social Research on 15 March at 35 Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0AX.

This half day session (12.30-4.30pm) will focus exclusively on the issues related to data and analysis quality arising from social media research, please see the programme copied below for more details. We have very limited spaces for this event so places will be allocated on a first come first served basis and preference will be given to participants willing to contribute a case study or example from their own experience to one of the sessions.  If you would like to attend the seminar please contact us (see below) confirming your contact details (email and phone number). We would hope attendees are able to share their experiences throughout the day of quality issues they have faced using social media.

■  Although the Seminar is free, space is limited; if you do not attend after reserving a place we will make an administrative charge to cover the costs of catering and administration. Please only reserve a space if you intend to attend.

■  In the next couple of weeks we will host the latest in out series of hour long NSMNSS tweetchats related to the issues for discussion in the seminar (follow the hashtag #NSMNSS to participate).

Our Knowledge Exchange Seminars provide an opportunity for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to share ideas. Each of the four sessions will be interactive, with lots of opportunity for open discussion. We are asking for network volunteers to help deliver the day. You can volunteer to:

■  Tell us about your experiences by providing a descriptive case study– a short 2-3 minute description of an ethical issue or concern that you have encountered in your social media research. Please identify which of the suggested themes in the programme you think your example would fit under and we will ask you to share this during the relevant session, in advance via a blog or on the day with a video blog.

If you would like to contribute to the event on 15^th March please reply to Kelsey Beninger on kelsey.beninger@natcen.ac.uk by 1^st March giving details also of whether and how you would like to contribute. If you would like to contribute a blog or case study, please also include what session your experience relates to.

A live stream of the event will be available, if you are unable to join us please share your thoughts and insights with tweets and comments on our Methodspace forum before and after the event. Remember you can join in network activities here at any time: http://www.natcen.ac.uk/nsmnss/

For a map to NatCen Social Research, please click here.

  

With thanks from the NSMNSS network team.

-------------------------------------------

Blurring the Boundaries - new social media, new social science?

Knowledge Exchange Seminar 4 |
Quality in Social Media Research

15^th March 2013, NatCen Social Research
35 Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0AX

12.30pm	Arrival and lunch
1.00pm	Session 1
	Augmenting curated data with twitter feeds	■     Dr. Luke Sloan, COSMOS, Cardiff University
1.50pm	Session 2
	Practical and epistemological challenges of online research	■     Antonio Casilli, Telecom ParisTech
2.40pm	Break
3.00pm	Session 3
	Depth or disinhibition? What is social media data telling us?	■     Stephen Webster, NatCen Social Research
3.50pm	Session 4
	Draw together key messages for quality	■     Led by NSMNSS
4.30pm	Close and next steps

Qualitative E-Research on E-Entrepreneurs

Not long ago entrepreneurs depended on financial capital to build the physical stores and factories needed to launch a business. And while costly physical operations are still important in some lines of business, 21century entrepreneurs see social capital as essential to a new venture. “Social capital” is the ability to build mutually-beneficial networks of partners, allies and customers (Adler & Kwon, 2002, p. 214; Carolis & Saparito, 2006; OttÓSson & Klyver, 2010; Xiong & Bharadwaj, 2011). Free or cheap technologies make it possible for start-ups to build social capital and sell products and services without huge initial investments. How do women entrepreneurs perceive their opportunities given the availability of these technologies and how do they use them to build networks that generate business? How have their choices vis a vis use of technology influenced the types of businesses they chose to run– and the goals they have for the future? This set of questions drove a study I conducted last year (Salmons, in press), and continued research.

Scholars have studied women entrepreneurs, and online entrepreneurs, but little research has explored the bootstrap, creative, small-scale woman entrepreneur who uses the social web to do her own thing. As well, it was apparent that much of the literature on women entrepreneurs is quantitative—and many studies draw on the same Big Data sources. A prominent one is the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) which publishes excellent reports and offers access to dataset downloads. Such data allows us to look at the gap between men and women entrepreneurs, the rate of start-up activity, the growth of women-owned firms, and other topics. Robust as this resource may be, it does not offer exemplars that allow for in-depth exploration of entrepreneurs’ motivations and purpose or to ask why they succeeded (or not), what they hope to achieve and how they feel about it. And the data collected by GEM and others makes little reference to the specific uses of social media and online communications by these entrepreneurs. To probe below the surface, qualitative methods are needed!

Using an exploratory grounded theory and situational analysis approach (Charmaz, 2006; Clarke, 2005), I studied a group of women e-entrepreneurs by following their digital footprints and by interviewing them online. Charmaz points out that in interviews the researcher "starts with the participant's story and fills it out by attempting to locate it within a basic social process" (Charmaz, 2003). Inthis study, participants' stories were located within the social process of business start-up and the entrepreneurial situation. The situational analysis approach allowed me to look closely at the situation by exploring inter-related human (entrepreneur, partners, allies, customers etc) and non-human aspects (technologies) of each entrepreneur’s unique case (Salmons, in press).Social Capital theory (Alfred, 2009; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998) offered a view of the "situation" that focused on the beneficial effects of electronic networks comprised of trusting relationships with partners, online followers or friends, and customers.

Half of my sample included women whom I defined as real-world e-entrepreneurs and half were defined as digital e-entrepreneurs. Real-world e-entrepreneurs use online communications with vendors and customers, partners and allies, and for promotions and advertising. However, products and services are physical and in some cases inherently face-to-face, delivered or purchased on location. Real-world e-entrepreneurs for this study included a jeweler, a designer for an architecture firm and a therapist. Digital e-entrepreneurs similarly use online communications, but are in the business of selling electronic products and services. Electronic products and services online writing, teaching, training, consulting, web design or programming.

Participants created online presence for their businesses using diverse approaches that aligned with business activities. Websites, blogs, wikis and a variety of social media sites allowed for communication, product sales, training, events, networking, advertising, or crowd-source funding. For this study I was not interested in the traffic or the content of a quantity of posts. I was interested in the unique characteristics of each case and through review of participants’ online activities I was able to learn about each respective business, and to generate specific questions for each interview.

Findings for the study include a set of themes which will provide the foundation for the next stage of research. While I gained understanding about ways entrepreneurs can use social media and online communications to build successful businesses from scratch, the study also offered new insights about the ways researchers can use online tools at every stage of the study. I used social media (Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, Kickstarter) to recruit participants by posting a link to a description of the study posted on my own website. I used Survey Monkey to create an electronic consent form (see discussion of this approach and example). Interviews were conducted online in Adobe Connect, using text, verbal and visual modes of communication. While the resulting chapter will appear in a book, I have used excerpts in various posts and presentations to disseminate some of the findings. One reflection is that online interview research concerns more than the interview, that online qualitative research is inherently multi-modal involving inter-related and overlapping participant and outsider observations, document and records analyses. Now I want to build an intentionally multi-modal approach into next phase of the study—stay tuned!

Janet Salmons, PhD

References

Adler, P. S., & Kwon, S. W. (2002). Social capital: Prospects for a new concept.

Academy of Management Review, 27, 17-40.

Alfred, M. V. (2009). Social capital theory: Implications for women's networking

and learning. New Directions for Adult & Continuing Education(122), 3-12. doi:

10.1002/ace.329

Carolis, D. M. D., & Saparito, P. (2006). Social capital, cognition, and

entrepreneurial opportunities: A theoretical framework. Entrepreneurship: Theory &

Practice, 30(1), 41-56. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6520.2006.00109.x

Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructed grounded theory: A practical guide through

qualitative analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Clarke, A. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern

turn. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Nahapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social capital, intellectual capital, and the

organizational advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(2), 242-266.

OttÓSson, H., & Klyver, K. I. M. (2010). The effect of human capital on social

capital among entrepreneurs. Journal of Enterprising Culture, 18(4), 399-417.

Salmons, J. E. (in press). Putting the “E” in entrepreneurship: Women entrepreneurs in

the digital age. In L. Kelley (Ed.), Women Entrepreneurship: New Management

and Leadership Models. Westport: Praeger.



Twitter chat transcript - qualitative methods

The latest transcript from our series of twitterchats, this time on qualitative research and new social media. If you couldn't make it, or if you did, but missed out on a link or snippet, the transcript is available after the jump. 

Thanks to everyone who joined - and apologies for the lateness in posting! 

Knowledge Exchange Seminar 3: Programme

12.30pm	Arrival and lunch
1.00pm	Session 1
	Opportunities and challenges of ‘Deep Data’	■   Janet Salmons
1.50pm	Session 2
	Netnography: understanding behaviour and networks	■   Gachoucha Kretz
2.40pm	Break
3.00pm	Session 3
	The changing role of the qualitative researcher online	■   Kandy Woodfield & Dr Sarah Quinnell
3.50pm	Session 4
	Key messages for qualitative methods in relation to: ■  Opportunities and challenges of ‘deep data’ ■  Methodological challenges of netnography ■  Developing appropriate relationships and engagement with participants	■   Led by NSMNSS: break out groups to consider one each of the three sessions, plus where there are skills gaps, or further development projects needed.
4.30pm	Close and next steps

Our next KE Seminar

We are delighted to announce that the third Knowledge Exchange Seminar of the New Social Media, New Social Science (NSMNSS) network will now take place in January 2013.

The 'Qualitative Research and Social Media' seminar will bring together specialist speakers to discuss a range of topics, including opportunities and challenges of 'Deep Data', understanding behaviours and networks through the lens of netnography, and the changing role of the qualitative researcher online. Please find attached a detailed programme.

When? Monday, 28th January. Arrival and lunch from 12:30, sessions from 13:00-16:30.

Where? Etc. Venues, The Hatton, 51-53 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8HN

For a map to the venue, please visit The Hatton.

R.S.V.P. Please contact Claire Ashby at NatCen Learning, claire.ashby@natcen.ac.uk to  confirm your attendance by Friday, 14 December. Please include in  your email whether you require any special considerations to attend the event.

First-come, first-served. We have very limited spaces for this event so places will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis, preference will be given to participants willing to contribute a case study or example from their own experience to one of the sessions, and provide their thoughts in a blog piece or through a short video which can be shared with the wider network.

We’ll ask contributors to share their experiences at the event by providing a descriptive case study - a short 2-3 minute description of your experience using qualitative methods in social media research. Please identify which of the suggested themes in the programme you think your example would fit under and we will ask you to share this during the relevant session.

Visit Methodspace (http://www.methodspace.com/profile/NSMNSS) or the

NSMNSS  Blog (http://nsmnss.blogspot.co.uk/) to read the latest discussions on social media in the social  sciences, and to view past videos capturing case studies for inspiration on preparing your own descriptive case study.

We look forward to seeing you on January 28th!

If you can’t join us at the event then we will be holding a webinar looking at the same range of issues on February 5th at 16:00 GMT/UTC, 17:00 CET, please reply claire.ashby@natcen.ac.uk with this message: ‘I would like to reserve a seat at the webinar on 5/02/13’ and we will send you details of your login for that session in the New Year.

Best wishes,

the NSMNSS network team

Deep Data: Digging into Social Media with Qualitative Methods

The ever-growing use of social media -- and the resultant Big Data-- excites quantitative researchers.  The potential to use social media to collect rich data that can generate new insights excites qualitative researchers.  Quantitative methods allow researchers to reveal and follow patterns of posts and responses by users of social media sites. But at some point we need to ask “why?” in order to discern users’ motivation, understand the significance of behaviours and learn how the experience is significant to their personal or professional lives.  Qualitative researchers have the ability to do so. Qualitative research approaches allow us to dig below the surface to explore how, why or what, and to explore relationships and connections not readily evident in Big Data—which is why I’ve taken to describing it as Deep Data.

While quantitative researchers typically collect data or track movements posted at a previous time, qualitative researchers can use asynchronous, synchronous and near-synchronous approaches. Social media sites allow researchers to develop new interpretations of classic qualitative data collection approaches: observations, interview and document analysis. (For more on social media communications and qualitative data collection, see my video blog here.)

We have a lot of options when it comes to the type of study to be conducted with qualitative research on, about or with social media. We can look at the online behavior as the research phenomenon itself, or we may look at the online behavior in relation to other thoughts, experiences or attitudes related to life on- or offline.

For example, as researchers we may be interested in how cancer survivors cope, and decide to conduct interviews with a text or video chat function in a social media platform because it allows us to select a more geographically dispersed sample.  Or, we may be interested in how cancer survivors use social media to build networks that help them cope. In this case, to understand participants’ choices, communications and patterns of usage on that platform, we may use observations of community events, such as a webinar with a guest speaker, analysis of posts, and/or interviews with community members to collect data. In the first example the social media platform is a means for communication that allows us to understand a research phenomenon. In the second example, the social media platform itself is part of the phenomenon being investigated. This fundamental choice about the research purpose and researcher’s motivation for using social media influences the entire research design, sampling and mode of data collection: what data to collect from whom, how, using what synchronous or asynchronous communications (Salmons, 2012). 

Clearly, varied combinations of social media tools and qualitative methods offer a wide range of options for social science researchers. There are many opportunities in the yet unexplored ways to think about qualitative research and social media—as well, there are many unanswered questions and challenges. A few intriguing areas for consideration are:

• Ethical dilemmas. Qualitative researchers will always need informed consent for interviews and direct exchanges with research participants. But the situation is fuzzier when the researcher is conducting observations or drawing content from posted materials in online settings where it may be hard to distinguish public from private. 
• Diverse data types. Communication in social media settings may involve a mix of visual, verbal and text-based exchanges. Qualitative researchers need to decide which types to use, and how to analyze them. As well, they need to consider intellectual property rights of images, or pictures that include other people who have not given permission for their use by the researcher.
• Non-neutral platforms:  Most social media sites are commercially owned. They are designed to generate revenue, not simply for a social good. Features are designed to encourage users to navigate and participate in certain ways. This means participants—unless they program their own online sites or interactive spaces—are not functioning online independent of  technical and other constraints.

What opportunities and obstacles do you see for qualitative researchers in the digital age? Please join NSMNSS in Methodspace, Twitter chats, virtual seminars and a coming Knowledge Exchange Seminar to share ideas and strategies.

 Janet Salmons, PhD

References

Dennis, Alan R, Fuller, Robert M., & Valacich, Joseph S. (2008). Media, tasks, and communication processes: A theory of media synchronicity. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 32(4), 575-600.

Kozinets, Robert V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Lindgren, Simon. (2012). Introducing Connected Concept Analysis: Confronting the challenge of large online texts through a qualitative approach to quantity. Paper presented at the IPP2012: Big Data, Big Challenges, University of Oxford.

Salmons, Janet E. (Ed.). (2012). Cases in online interview research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. (For more on the E-Interview Research Framework, see here)