Chapter 1: Doing Qualitative Research Online: An Introduction
Chapter 2: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Maintaining Rigorous Standards in Collecting, Archiving, and Analyzing Data
Chapter 3: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Gaining Access, Trust and Participation
Chapter 4: Doing qualitative research online: Utilizing and Analyzing Groups
Chapter 5: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Interviewing issues and strategies
Chapter 6: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Utilizing and Analyzing Real-Time Text-based Communication
Chapter 7: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Using and Analyzing Weblogs
Chapter 8: Doing Qualitative Research Online: Using and Analyzing Websites
This book is designed to walk a researcher through common stages and forms of qualitative inquiry involving Computer-Mediated Communication. The epistemological approach adopted by the author throughout the book is social constructionist, symbolic interactionist, and ethnographic.
Currently, qualitative researchers of the Internet rely on methodology tools only tangentially related to the specific ethical, practical, and logistical issues arising in Internet studies. This book is designed to provide a much-needed tool for practicing researchers. The eight topic areas covered in this book series encompass the more challenging methods issues and innovative research possibilities associated with Internet mediated communication.
1) Doing Qualitative Research Online: An Introduction
Synopsis:
“Doing research online” can mean many different things: It can refer to using computer-mediated communication as a tool for qualitative research, such as email, SMS, websites, weblogs, and so forth. It can also refer to the study of computer- or Internet-mediated relationships and communities. “Doing research online” can also refer to the general study of communication technologies. Because the terms are ambiguous, this introductory chapter will clarify and overview the topic of the series.
This chapter provides an overview of how Internet communication intersects with these three areas and then discusses major methodological considerations for each.
This chapter emphasizes the utility and benefit of the book for three types of researchers: a) researchers who want to explore computer-mediated communication environments or examine how the Internet influences social life, b) researchers who want to use computer-mediated communication tools to augment traditional social studies, and c) researchers who interested in how Internet-mediated communication can change the way we understand and study social life.
2) Maintaining Rigorous Standards in Collecting, Archiving, and Analyzing Data
Synopsis:
This chapter proposes that even in a postmodern era of scholarship, standards for quality remain a key issue for qualitative researchers. Developing and adhering to some set of standards is especially important when the inquiry involves new and possibly unfamiliar methods, venues, and technologies.
This chapter provides an overview of contemporary definitions of rigor and quality in qualitative sociology and other related disciplines of inquiry. Then, it uses specific examples from online research to illustrate how researchers can achieve quality by adhering to basic standards for quality in scholarly inquiry.
Specific recommendations are provided regarding:
Determining
how much is enough in data collection
Keeping
accurate and easily accessible records
Adhering
to ethical guidelines
Using a
consistent and systematic method for analyzing data
Providing details of data
collection and analysis procedures in the research report.
3) Gaining Access, Trust, and Participation
Synopsis:
The ease with which one can access data online may lead to oversimplification of the qualitative approach to studying culture. Internet researchers face many of the same problems traditional ethnographic researchers do: Establishing trust, building rapport with participants, struggling with the issue of authenticity, considering the role of the researcher, and so forth. Internet-mediated environments also facilitate new problems or opportunities, such as anonymous or disembodied participants and new forms of discursive behaviour (such as weblogs, website design, and text messaging). As technologies change rapidly, methods must be flexible to suitably investigate a wide variety of discursively-constituted cultural forms.
Whether one interacts with participants or collects naturally occurring discourse, online communication environments tend to highlight certain aspects of communication (the content of the message, the negotiation of meaning) while minimizing others (facial expressions, socio-economic cues). Keen researchers will reassess many taken-for-granted assumptions about interaction among cultural members and the way technology influences the cultural context and research process.
This chapter utilizes case study examples to illustrate key challenges faced by ethnographers seeking to access, utilize, observe, or participate in computer-mediated communication as a means of gathering data from individuals or groups. The primary focus of this chapter is to promote the idea of flexible adaptation and sensitivity to the context.
Throughout the chapter, the following will be included:
Specific
procedures for gaining access to groups,
Strategies
for establishing rapport with participants and gaining informed consent
Procedures
for determining the boundaries of the field and the units of analysis.
Examples
of how to improve conversational skills in the field, using various computer-mediated
communication technologies to assist in this process.
Strategies
for how to match the media to the research question or the specific context.
An overview
of general ethical guidelines for collecting data in computer mediated environments.
4) Utilizing and Analyzing Groups
Synopsis:
Computer-mediated communication provides the means by which users can communicate in groups despite vast geographic distance, incompatible schedules, and so forth. Text is the primary means of interaction in these environments, and people feel a sense of presence and connection that seems to go far beyond what we would intuitively think happens with the mere exchange of messages. This phenomenon has grown rapidly in the past decade and been studied extensively.
The type of communication primarily used by these groups is asynchronous, and can be transmitted in email, listservs, threaded discussion boards using special software or the web. Each interface presents the researcher with challenges, as the medium inevitably influences the way people interact and therefore the way the community evolves.
Asynchronous communication has useful features for qualitative researchers, as it allows the user to consider and edit his or her message before sending. It also allows subjects and researchers to participate at their convenience.
This chapter focuses on the processes and issues involved in utilizing and analyzing asynchronous communication with small groups, virtual communities, or online focus groups. The author discusses specific considerations involved in the analysis of discourse and structure in online groups. The following will also be included:
Procedures
for matching the media with the purpose of the study in focus group design
Procedures
for (and challenges with) interacting with participants in asynchronous media
Strategies
for sustaining asynchronous communication over time in longitudinal studies
Guidelines
for managing large amounts of data.
5) Interviewing issues and strategies
Synopsis:
For most qualitative researchers working in the ethnographic tradition, interviewing is an essential component of collecting information from participants. In an online environment, the researcher must reassess many taken-for-granted assumptions about how interviewing works.
Internet-mediated communication provides many useful means of accessing and interviewing participants, using asynchronous or synchronous software and a range of text, audio, and visual-based tools. Researchers have utilized these interviewing tools somewhat haphazardly; decisions made about which tools to use are often determined by convenience (convenience for the researcher).
This chapter uses case studies and specific examples to identify and address key questions and issues that must be addressed when determining the type of interviewing environment to be used (real-time, email, threaded discussion, anonymous, known, face-to-face or solely online). It also addresses key distinctions between interviewing face-to-face and in a computer-mediated environment. Finally, this chapter provides specific examples to illustrate how one’s methods decisions can influence the relationship between researcher and participant and can influence the outcome of this data collection method.
Also included:
Procedures
for developing interview protocols
Sample
interview questions
Strategies
for facilitating conversation in computer-mediated environments
Examples
of how to utilize different media for different interview/research purposes
6) Utilizing and Analyzing Real-Time Text-Based Communication
Synopsis:
Real-time chat (multiple forms) is a fast paced and typically very casual form of interaction. In certain software environments, chat can be a completely anonymous form of interaction for people. Meaningful communities can emerge through the exclusive use of synchronous text based chat. The growth of Instant Messaging among friends and in professional settings among colleagues demonstrates the utility and ease with which people are adapting to and adopting this form of communication. On the other hand, interactions in these environments can feel fleeting, disjunctive, and highly disconcerting, especially for novice users.
As a cultural context, real-time chat offers the qualitative researcher intriguing means of tracking and understanding contemporary social life. As a tool for interacting with participants, real-time chat offers many significant benefits, including instant archiving, global reach, and participant anonymity. At the same time, these capacities can pose many challenges for the researcher if they do not suit the research question.
Whether interviewing participants in one-on-one or group situations, observing groups interacting in these environments, or setting up focus groups, the researcher utilizing synchronous computer-mediated communication must be facile with the technologies and aware of the ways these communication environments can influence interaction.
This chapter provides specific guidance for the researcher to understand and manage the unique features of real-time computer-mediated communication. Using case studies and extensive examples, the author walks the reader through the benefits and disadvantages of this type of interaction, outlines procedures for setting up, accessing, and/or tracking texts in these environments, and provides guidelines and standards for ethical assessment of human subject considerations.
7) Using and analyzing Weblogs
Synopsis:
Weblogs (Blogs) or web journals are a growing phenomenon among Internet users and a valuable tool for qualitative inquiry. Blogs allow users to keep a public or private journal on the worldwide web which is easily accessible and changeable via any Internet browser. Often comprising a community of joined sites (linked authors), these web journals constitute cultural artefacts as well as cultural archives of contemporary social life.
This communication medium creates a valuable means of generating or gathering information from study participants, either at the individual or group level.
This chapter discusses cutting edge strategies for developing web-based environments for participants as well as for collecting and making sense of data generated in these environments.
8) Using and Analyzing Websites
Synopsis:
As still and moving images and sound are more and more integrated into computer-mediated communication, websites comprise a significant yet underdeveloped means of witnessing and analyzing individuals and cultures from a sociological perspective. Visual-based computer-mediated environments provide an intriguing means of learning about how people or organizations envision, produce, and display information about themselves for public or public consumption.
Much can be learned by analyzing a person’s or an organization’s website, yet few resources are available to aid in the analysis of visual data. This chapter uses case study examples to illustrate the importance of analyzing visual online data along with other forms of interaction or communication. Specific analytical tools are provided, along with a discussion of major issues confronting the qualitative researcher wanting to read culture through a visual lens.
This chapter also provides the following:
Specific
steps for analyzing visual data (steps determined by theoretical approach)
Strategies
for obtaining and archiving websites effectively and efficiently.
Problems
and issues to consider in presenting analytical findings for colleagues, with
recommendations for supplemental research findings sites (websites hosted by
the publisher or academic institution which archive and display visual data).