Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

I have chosen a paper by Lange, P. G., titled “Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube” and published in 2007 in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [1].

The paper examines how users on YouTube develop and maintain their social relationships on the site by implementing different behaviors to their videos (eg. access and content). Differences in behaviors and how these choices reflect the different kinds of social relationships are analyzed.

The qualitative methods used in the study is a combination of ethnographic methods, including:

(1) Content analysis. Consists of analyzing “textual content collected from a communication medium” [2]. In this case, it included analyzing the contents of the videos, video responses and comments to videos.

(2) Observations. Included activities such as monitoring featured videos on YouTube, the YouTube blog, videos of the interviewees and others, comments and responses, among others. Additionally, Lange examined the subscriptions and friending practices.

(3) Interviews. 54 were conducted, in age from 9-43, with the majority being mid-teens to early 20s and from the US. The interview included a survey on demographic background and media use. 29 of the interviews were conducted over the phone, 15 via online chat and 10 face-to-face.

Content analysis can be time consuming as there's a need of collecting content, analyzing, and possibly compare, find patterns and causality. For textual content, this can be difficult and become a matter of subjectivity. A benefit is that the information is already provided – no effort is needed to create the data. The content is also genuine and was (likely) not affected by anyone. It's thus possible to identify the intentions or communication trends [3].

The benefits of the observation is that the author was able to detect changes and behaviors as it was done during a period of a year. In this case, the observation was done without participants and merely observed the scene. If participants were aware of them being observed, it might have affected the way they post videos, comment, etc.

The interviews were conducted in three different ways. That's a benefit as you're able to collect varying data instead of coming from one small group. Interviews inform you of the respondents thoughts, intentions and reasons which are otherwise unknown during observations or surveys. The limitations to interviews are the possibility of the respondents to choose what information to disclose and the varying possibilities of reflection to the different ways of conducting the interview – by phone, mail, e-mail, chat or physical meet-up.

What I learnt from this paper is the combination of methods used, and especially the interviews. The author conducted the interviews in different ways, by phone, chat and physical meeting, which I think is a good strategy if you aren't able to meet up with everyone and want to reach a broad target. 

One problem though with the interviews is that different ways of conducting interviews may generate varying answers. The interviewees on chat had time to reflect on their answers or they could have been distracted by their environment during the interview. What's important to know is that neither can you hear their voices nor see their body language as they express their opinions. You leave out important information that can't be collected through text. This depends though on whether you value those things for your research. Interview by chat might generate more genuine answers as the interviewees are comfortable at home and there is no pressure while answering.

For improvement, it might be better to choose one type of interview method in order to give all respondents equal possibility to give a response. That way you can equally analyze the data without having to think twice, eg. whether an answer from face-to-face and from the chat are comparable.

A case study is a research strategy “which focuses on understanding the dynamics present withing single settings” [4]. That is, analyzing the contexts of events or conditions and their relationships [5]. The purpose of a case study is to bring a better understanding of an issue or an object through the contexts [5], and provide description, test or generate theory [4].

Using Eisenhardt's process of building theory [6] on my selected paper [7].:

The research questions are not explicitly specified but rather described. I see this as a weakness as they are not clearly stated.

The population selected for the methods is specified along with motivations.

Two data collection methods were used: a case study that provides empirical findings from the analysis of text and 15 qualitative interviews. This strengthens the theory of the paper. However, the author did not combine with any quantitative methods which could be a weakness as the author only provides the results by text in the form of descriptions. But as two methods were used, I think it weighs up.

Sources:
[1]: Lange, P. G. (2007),Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13: 361–380. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00400.x

[2]: “Content analysis”. Course wiki, Theory and Method for Media Technology (DM2572).
[3]: Uses of Content Analysis, Colorado State University.  
[4]: Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550. 
[5]: Soy, Susan K. (1997). The case study as a researchmethod. Unpublished paper, University of Texas at Austin.  
[6]: Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.
[7]: Lee H-K (2011) Participatory media fandom: A case study of anime fansubbing. Media, Culture & Society. 33 (8), 1131–1147.