Part 1
I chose a qualitative researched paper named Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube written by Patricia G. Lange. The paper is from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which has an impact factor of 2.019.
I chose a qualitative researched paper named Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube written by Patricia G. Lange. The paper is from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which has an impact factor of 2.019.
The paper analyzes the Social Network Site (SNS) YouTube and how the users who’re uploading and sharing their videos, select different approaches depending on what part of their social circle they want to reach. The author investigate especially two different cases when it comes to sharing videos and get publicity. The first one is called “Publicy private” which means that the publisher of a video shows its identity but make sure that the video is hard find on YouTube. The other one is called “privately public” that is basically the opposite. The uploader wants to reach as many viewers as possible but at the same time, the identity should be hidden for the viewers.
Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
The paper used qualitative methods combined with a quantitative one. It contained interviews (N=54) of people in primarily the United States of an age distribution from 9 to 43 and each interview lasted for 1-3 hours. There were three different types of interviews; phone-interviews, interviews conducted over messaging chat and finally face-to-face interviews. In order to find the focus group that was most suited for the interviews, Lange used a quantitative method in the shape of a pre-interview survey. The survey had the aim to understand the media use and demographic background of the user. The author also collected field notes from observations made on YouTube over one year. Published comments and uploaded videos were analyzed. The benefits of a large amount of interviews is that the researcher may get inputs and new experiences from the interviewees that never would appear from an online survey etc. Thoughts and viewpoints from interviews also has the potential to lead into new fields that the researcher later can investigate deeper. On the other hand, since there were three different interview methods, one might answer differently or be misunderstood based on how the interview is designed. For example, it’s easier to interpret body-language in a face-to-face interview than a text-chat interview and how the answers are perceived may differ.
The paper used qualitative methods combined with a quantitative one. It contained interviews (N=54) of people in primarily the United States of an age distribution from 9 to 43 and each interview lasted for 1-3 hours. There were three different types of interviews; phone-interviews, interviews conducted over messaging chat and finally face-to-face interviews. In order to find the focus group that was most suited for the interviews, Lange used a quantitative method in the shape of a pre-interview survey. The survey had the aim to understand the media use and demographic background of the user. The author also collected field notes from observations made on YouTube over one year. Published comments and uploaded videos were analyzed. The benefits of a large amount of interviews is that the researcher may get inputs and new experiences from the interviewees that never would appear from an online survey etc. Thoughts and viewpoints from interviews also has the potential to lead into new fields that the researcher later can investigate deeper. On the other hand, since there were three different interview methods, one might answer differently or be misunderstood based on how the interview is designed. For example, it’s easier to interpret body-language in a face-to-face interview than a text-chat interview and how the answers are perceived may differ.
What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
One thing i noticed and learnt from this paper and its methods is how time-consuming it actually can be to fulfill a study like this. It requires a lot of discipline and time to perform one year of observations, analyze a pre-interview survey and finally complete all the interviews. I also learned that it’s important to be adaptive when doing interviews for example. In this research, the interviewer had prepared different question depending on the the participants’ backgrounds, interests and media choices etc.
One thing i noticed and learnt from this paper and its methods is how time-consuming it actually can be to fulfill a study like this. It requires a lot of discipline and time to perform one year of observations, analyze a pre-interview survey and finally complete all the interviews. I also learned that it’s important to be adaptive when doing interviews for example. In this research, the interviewer had prepared different question depending on the the participants’ backgrounds, interests and media choices etc.
Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
One methodological problem of the study is to find the most suitable group to the interviews. Since Lange partly wants to compare two different type of user groups on YouTube which are quite hard to define, it may occur that the participants perceive themselves as one type of user while the researchers understand them as something different. This could lead questionable results. Another problem is that the author wants to investigate too many questions in the research. To narrow down the scope of the survey a bit could lead to a better and clearer result.
One methodological problem of the study is to find the most suitable group to the interviews. Since Lange partly wants to compare two different type of user groups on YouTube which are quite hard to define, it may occur that the participants perceive themselves as one type of user while the researchers understand them as something different. This could lead questionable results. Another problem is that the author wants to investigate too many questions in the research. To narrow down the scope of the survey a bit could lead to a better and clearer result.
Part 2
For this part i chose the paper Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry from the journal named International Journal of Information Management.
For this part i chose the paper Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry from the journal named International Journal of Information Management.
Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
A case study is one way of obtaining and analyzing conclusions by using one or a several real-life phenomena/persons/events. Furthermore, a case study can include different cases and many analysis based on their structure. It also used to be done in an empirical way, which means that the researchers collect data from the reality and experiences.
A case study is one way of obtaining and analyzing conclusions by using one or a several real-life phenomena/persons/events. Furthermore, a case study can include different cases and many analysis based on their structure. It also used to be done in an empirical way, which means that the researchers collect data from the reality and experiences.
Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.
Firstly, the paper is getting started by defining three different research questions:
*What patterns can be found from their Facebook sites respectively?
*What patterns can be found from their Twitter sites respectively?
*What are the main differences in terms of their Facebook and Twitter patterns?
I like that fact that it’s done early in the research which makes it easier for the reader to understand what parts that are going to be investigated. Hence, the authors selected cases by picking three of the largest pizza chains in America; Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s Pizza. They’re clear with why they want to do a case on these three specific Pizza chains which is good. I also think they were clear with the crafting instruments and protocol step since they collected quantitative data regarding the Pizza business from their social media flow, e.g. by looking at the number of fans/followers and comments. They also analyzed the patterns and use of social media from the three Pizza chains by applying text mining on the text messages that were posted on their sites.
I think the study more all less included all the steps from Eisenhardts’ table. However, this study only take the three largest chains into consideration. It would have been interesting to compare this with a couple of smaller and probably unknown Pizza companies to find out differences in their social media use. Another thing that could have been done differently or improved is that they maybe could have spoken to the companies themselves and get their viewpoint on how they work with social media instead of just emanating from the analyzed data collected.
Firstly, the paper is getting started by defining three different research questions:
*What patterns can be found from their Facebook sites respectively?
*What patterns can be found from their Twitter sites respectively?
*What are the main differences in terms of their Facebook and Twitter patterns?
I like that fact that it’s done early in the research which makes it easier for the reader to understand what parts that are going to be investigated. Hence, the authors selected cases by picking three of the largest pizza chains in America; Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s Pizza. They’re clear with why they want to do a case on these three specific Pizza chains which is good. I also think they were clear with the crafting instruments and protocol step since they collected quantitative data regarding the Pizza business from their social media flow, e.g. by looking at the number of fans/followers and comments. They also analyzed the patterns and use of social media from the three Pizza chains by applying text mining on the text messages that were posted on their sites.
I think the study more all less included all the steps from Eisenhardts’ table. However, this study only take the three largest chains into consideration. It would have been interesting to compare this with a couple of smaller and probably unknown Pizza companies to find out differences in their social media use. Another thing that could have been done differently or improved is that they maybe could have spoken to the companies themselves and get their viewpoint on how they work with social media instead of just emanating from the analyzed data collected.
I find your comments and reflections very well-written and interesting! I agree with your comment about the three different interview types. How can they be interpreted as one and the same result if the method is conducted in a different way? The topic at hand is a little bit blurry to me, as the categories are highly subjective. I don't think there are that many clear types, I think most people in either category wants some people to know who they are, be it close friends or what not. To me it seems that this study has taken a lot of time and effort and in the end it might be really difficult to see any real results or draw any major conclusions. furthermore, if the authors choose to mix in a lot of different research questions, this may lead to an ever more blurry result in the end.
SvaraRadera