No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Social media in qualitative research: Challenges and recommendations
Abstract
The emergence of social media on the Internet provides an opportunity for information systems researchers to examine new phenomena in new ways. However, for various reasons qualitative researchers in IS have not fully embraced this opportunity. This paper looks at the potential use of social media in qualitative research in information systems. It discusses some of the challenges of using social media and suggests how qualitative IS researchers can design their studies to capitalize on social media data. After discussing an illustrative qualitative study, the paper makes recommendations for the use of social media in qualitative research in IS.
... However, a known inconvenience is the vast amount of data, which presents challenges for qualitative analysis [71]- [73]. Thus, we extracted a purposive sample to conduct qualitative analyses in alignment with the framework proposed by [72] and the recommendations and strategy by [73] and [71] to find a relevant sample to the research question and study goal. ...
... However, a known inconvenience is the vast amount of data, which presents challenges for qualitative analysis [71]- [73]. Thus, we extracted a purposive sample to conduct qualitative analyses in alignment with the framework proposed by [72] and the recommendations and strategy by [73] and [71] to find a relevant sample to the research question and study goal. ...
... These three studies [71]- [73] exhibit commonalities that influence our methodological approach in curating a manageable sample for qualitative analysis. Initially, big textual data is collected from relevant channels (i.e., channels specified for learning programming); it then requires exploration using software for qualitative analyses or text mining software, preparing it to extract manageable subsets rich in relevant data. ...
... Coding in the early stages of data analysis is guided by previous themes identified Rageh et al., 2013). Miles and Huberman suggest that the initial list of codes can be found on "a conceptual framework, a list of research questions, hypotheses, problem areas, and key variables that the researcher brings to the research" (Bowler, 2010;McKenna et al., 2017;Rageh et al., 2013Rageh et al., , 2013. Selective coding ultimately involves moving to a higher level of abstraction with paradigmatic constructs being developed, defining relationships, and describing core categories or constructs in which categories and other constructs revolve around and relating them to one another (Bowler, 2010;McKenna et al., 2017;Rageh et al., 2013Rageh et al., , 2013. ...
... Miles and Huberman suggest that the initial list of codes can be found on "a conceptual framework, a list of research questions, hypotheses, problem areas, and key variables that the researcher brings to the research" (Bowler, 2010;McKenna et al., 2017;Rageh et al., 2013Rageh et al., , 2013. Selective coding ultimately involves moving to a higher level of abstraction with paradigmatic constructs being developed, defining relationships, and describing core categories or constructs in which categories and other constructs revolve around and relating them to one another (Bowler, 2010;McKenna et al., 2017;Rageh et al., 2013Rageh et al., , 2013. The picture describes the learning process in netnography. ...
... Social media is a buzzword these days, providing a way to interact with one another even while on the go. As a result, platforms like Facebook, Google+, Twitter has recently become a valuable business tool (Brem & Bilgram, 2015;McKenna et al., 2017;Vecchio et al., 2011). Many businesses take advantage of these social media platforms to market their products or services and create engagement with their brands. ...
This study aims to investigate the corporate image of six significant online organizational communities and their efforts to achieve sustainability. The research focuses on exploring the communication, interaction, and connection strategies employed by these companies on social media platforms to build their corporate image. The study adopts a Netnography approach, employing thematic content analysis, sentiment analysis, and social network analysis to analyze the collected data. The findings of the analysis reveal various patterns in companies' communication approaches on social media, emphasizing their commitment to sustainability. The study also highlights the importance of transparency and collaboration in building a positive corporate image and fostering stakeholder engagement. Overall, the research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on sustainability communication and social media's role in shaping corporate sustainability image.
... We define and describe social media platforms as follows. A social media platform refers to computer-based tools (such as websites and apps) for individuals to create and share content with others and/or participate in a community (McKenna, Myers, and Newman 2017). The social media platform provides each virtual community with a set of IT features, which are the designated functionalities built into it (Majchrzak and Markus 2012). ...
... Our application of the risk mitigation process of risk society theory ( Figure 1) (Beck 1992;Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994) and the technology-driven relationship of social media platform ( Figure 2) (e.g., McKenna, Myers, and Newman 2017;Majchrzak and Markus 2012) serves as the sensitising device for our analysis discussed in the following sections. ...
During a disaster, many people seek information from virtual communities. However, information overload, falsehoods and unrelated topics hinder information flow in virtual communities, putting disaster victims at risk. Given many disasters are generally of a short duration, we explore how virtual communities can quickly reconfigure themselves to respond effectively to a disaster. Drawing on risk society theory, our findings suggest reconfiguration is done via a series of cycles initially involving community members and subsequently featuring both community members and moderators working together to mitigate risks. We contribute to virtual community discourse on disaster response by showing how a virtual community can configure IT features to bring about change. Practically, we find transforming a virtual community from a normal to a disaster response mode requires (1) creating a controlled information hub, (2) promoting identity revelation and (3) allowing for temporary emergent hyperlocal leadership. While earlier IS research suggests that anonymity, openness and geographical dispersion are important for information dissemination in virtual communities, we suggest these practices may need to be changed during a disaster.
... Still, if social science studies do not include data science competencies beyond the ones typically covered in quantitative methods, they risk limiting the scope of research objectives that are topical and relevant to theory and practice. For example, a shortage of relevant skills and competencies limits the potential of projects to utilise mixed methods approaches, where qualitative insight can be combined with sources like social media data or crowdsourcing [11], [12]. This particularly applies to interdisciplinary projects, defined as "research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or field of research practice" [13, p. 26]. ...
... It is worth noting that reflections like the above do not imply that complex data science methods will a priori result in better PhD projects or increased chances of publication in highly esteemed outlets. On the contrary, research should be driven by "big questions" and not by "[big] data" [11] or, as captured succinctly by Boyd and Crawford [14, p. 663]: "[big data involves] mythology: the widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previously impossible, with the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy". Therefore, more attention should be paid to creating the necessary research capacity to deal with data in creative ways that are still appropriate and relevant to the research objectives. ...
Developments in data science methods have changed how we design, review and publish social science research. The impact on academic development has been multifaceted: new research opportunities have come with additional demands on training researchers to develop advanced data skills and apply them to research outputs. For early career researchers, meeting existing work demands and investing time in data skills can be a difficult proposition. In this paper, we consider the challenges that doctoral and early career researchers face when it comes to short-and long-term career goals and discuss how to collectively overcome them. Recommendations are organised around the key areas identified by the Learning, Leading, Linking framework. We emphasise that doctoral researchers in social sciences should be supported to develop their skills and pursue meaningful collaborations with other disciplines and external stakeholders as domain specialists.
... In order to extract meaning from the images, visual analysis has been employed to analyze the present visual elements in an explorative and systematic way (Krippendorff, 2013). Such analysis has been used in similar research as a qualitative technique appropriate for exploring phenomena in mass media (McKenna et al, 2017;Rose, 2016). ...
... Patient narrative is already recognized as a tool that can help patients, clinicians, and researchers [22,23]. Containing a mix of both objective and subjective views, SGOPE data provide a unique perspective on the way that patients perceive, manage, and react to their conditions, as well as how such conditions impact their life, their treatments, or other aspects of their health [24]. ...
Background
Patient experience data from social media offer patient-centered perspectives on disease, treatments, and health service delivery. Current guidelines typically rely on systematic reviews, while qualitative health studies are often seen as anecdotal and nongeneralizable. This study explores combining personal health experiences from multiple sources to create generalizable evidence.
Objective
The study aims to (1) investigate how combining unsupervised natural language processing (NLP) and corpus linguistics can explore patient perspectives from a large unstructured dataset of modafinil experiences, (2) compare findings with Cochrane meta-analyses on modafinil’s effectiveness, and (3) develop a methodology for analyzing such data.
Methods
Using 69,022 posts from 790 sources, we used a variety of NLP and corpus techniques to analyze the data, including data cleaning techniques to maximize post context, Python for NLP techniques, and Sketch Engine for linguistic analysis. We used multiple topic mining approaches, such as latent Dirichlet allocation, nonnegative matrix factorization, and word-embedding methods. Sentiment analysis used TextBlob and Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner, while corpus methods including collocation, concordance, and n-gram generation. Previous work had mapped topic mining to themes, such as health conditions, reasons for taking modafinil, symptom impacts, dosage, side effects, effectiveness, and treatment comparisons.
Results
Key findings of the study included modafinil use across 166 health conditions, most frequently narcolepsy, multiple sclerosis, attention-deficit disorder, anxiety, sleep apnea, depression, bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and chronic disease. Word-embedding topic modeling mapped 70% of posts to predefined themes, while sentiment analysis revealed 65% positive responses, 6% neutral responses, and 28% negative responses. Notably, the perceived effectiveness of modafinil for various conditions strongly contrasts with the findings of existing randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews, which conclude insufficient or low-quality evidence of effectiveness.
Conclusions
This study demonstrated the value of combining NLP with linguistic techniques for analyzing large unstructured text datasets. Despite varying opinions, findings were methodologically consistent and challenged existing clinical evidence. This suggests that patient-generated data could potentially provide valuable insights into treatment outcomes, potentially improving clinical understanding and patient care.
... There is no agreement in the literature on what the proper definition of "social media" would entail. Still, most definitions rely on terms such as "online content" and "user-generated content" (McKenna et al., 2017). There are also many variants of social media, going from blogs over social networks to virtual social worlds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). ...
This open access textbook provides an introduction to the software program NVivo, the most widely used qualitative analysis program. It is a versatile program with an extensive range of accessible analysis tools, flexibly deployable in the diversity of qualitative analysis approaches.
Qualitative analysis is almost standard practice today with the help of a software program. Yet there are many misunderstandings about qualitative software. They support the qualitative researcher but never take over their manual and theoretical work. An in-depth understanding of the possibilities of a qualitative software program helps to free up time for the analysis itself.
The possibilities of NVivo in this book are approached from a researcher's perspective. That is precisely why gaining efficiency in using the software tools gets a prominent place in the chapters. The author examines basic skills, such as managing data, working with memos and coding qualitative data. This includes textual data (such as transcripts from interviews and focus groups) and audiovisual material (sound, video and images). The book also discusses more advanced analysis tools, such as case coding, queries, AI tools, matrices and models (maps).
This textbook is intended for all users of NVivo, both early career researchers and more advanced analysts, who want to further discover the secrets of this software package along the way.
... There is no agreement in the literature on what the proper definition of "social media" would entail. Still, most definitions rely on terms such as "online content" and "user-generated content" (McKenna et al., 2017). There are also many variants of social media, going from blogs over social networks to virtual social worlds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). ...
This chapter familiarises readers with the workspace and specific jargon of NVivo. The chapter describes the overall layout of the workspace and the navigation around the different tools of the program. Specific attention is devoted to interface components such as the Navigation View, the List View, and the Detail View. The chapter also introduces the basic terminology used within NVivo, preparing readers to navigate and utilise the different tools available in the software.
... In a first step, the authors took static screenshots of each advert -80 in total (3-5 per advert depending on advert length) -and conducted a 'pilot' analysis assessing the type of argument contained in each. Rather than taking screenshots at regular intervals, key narrative moments (in terms of discourse of fear) were chosen instead (McKenna et al., 2017). Preliminary analysis revealed semantic differences in political prioritisation. ...
The UK Government has produced an array of televised information adverts or ‘campaigns’ to increase public awareness of COVID-19 and promote compliance with its subsequent policy. Research has shown that compliance with public health policy is influenced by fearful visual-verbal campaign messaging strategies, and that emotive representations of ‘risk’ aregenerally perceived to be more effective than non-emotive discourse. However, how the Government has semiotically constructed and utilised fear within their COVID-19 campaigns to nudge public compliance remains unexplored. Preliminary analysis of seventeen COVID-19 adverts revealed four sequential phases to the Government’s pandemic response: responsibility, management, mitigation, and reflection. An in-depth Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of four selected adverts (one screenshot per advert, per phase), revealed that fear was constructed using less conventional meaning potentials in favour of more implicit multimodal semiotic interactions. By portraying a ‘good’ pandemic subject as one who makes ‘moral’ and ‘rational’ decisions to comply with COVID-19 policy, pre-existing societal inequalities which might hinder compliance, particularly for the socioeconomically disadvantaged groups of society, were reduced and problematised. This raises ethical concerns over notions of ‘expertise’ and the ‘rationalising’ of ‘irrational’ lifestyles. Future research should further explore multimodal nudges in public health campaigns to hold producers accountable.
... Given that the foundation of this work is CITC, it is important to emphasise that manually analysing data to generate concepts and associations is crucial to constructing process theory. For instance, reduction or filtering is beneficial in a qualitative context as it allows researchers to extract a subset of data to manually map theoretically relevant concepts (Lindberg, 2020;McKenna et al., 2017). While automated methods may facilitate this process, manual human activities remain indispensable (Shrestha et al., 2021). ...
The growing availability of expansive social media trace data (SMTD) offers researchers promising opportunities to create rich depictions of societal and social phenomena. Despite this potential, research analysing such data often struggles to construct novel theoretical insight. This paper argues that holistically incorporating temporality enhances data collection and data analysis, subsequently facilitating process theory construction from SMTD. Recommendations to integrate temporality are outlined in the proposed Temporal Dynamics Framework and Methodology (TDFM). We apply the TDFM to investigate the temporal dynamics of mental health discourse on Twitter (now X) across different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, theoretically framed in the context of innate psychological needs satisfaction. The findings reveal dynamic shifts in social media use, indicating that different phases of the pandemic triggered changes in the needs motivating, and being motivated by, social media use. This illustrative case reflectively evaluates the TDFM's usefulness in contextualising SMTD collection, analytical strategies, and process theory construction by incorporating a dynamic perspective on time.
... However, it should be noted that sourcing the data to be analyzed from web-based forums may have implications for the quality of the output. Forum data are user generated and, by nature, less focused than data generated though targeted questions (eg, as is the case with interview and survey data), potentially leading to convoluted data [58]. In our study, this issue was partly circumvented by using secondary data that met certain eligibility criteria to ensure that they related to lived experiences of people trying to change sugar consumption [41]. ...
Background
Data analysis approaches such as qualitative content analysis are notoriously time and labor intensive because of the time to detect, assess, and code a large amount of data. Tools such as ChatGPT may have tremendous potential in automating at least some of the analysis.
Objective
The aim of this study was to explore the utility of ChatGPT in conducting qualitative content analysis through the analysis of forum posts from people sharing their experiences on reducing their sugar consumption.
Methods
Inductive and deductive content analysis were performed on 537 forum posts to detect mechanisms of behavior change. Thorough prompt engineering provided appropriate instructions for ChatGPT to execute data analysis tasks. Data identification involved extracting change mechanisms from a subset of forum posts. The precision of the extracted data was assessed through comparison with human coding. On the basis of the identified change mechanisms, coding schemes were developed with ChatGPT using data-driven (inductive) and theory-driven (deductive) content analysis approaches. The deductive approach was informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework using both an unconstrained coding scheme and a structured coding matrix. In total, 10 coding schemes were created from a subset of data and then applied to the full data set in 10 new conversations, resulting in 100 conversations each for inductive and unconstrained deductive analysis. A total of 10 further conversations coded the full data set into the structured coding matrix. Intercoder agreement was evaluated across and within coding schemes. ChatGPT output was also evaluated by the researchers to assess whether it reflected prompt instructions.
Results
The precision of detecting change mechanisms in the data subset ranged from 66% to 88%. Overall κ scores for intercoder agreement ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 across inductive coding schemes and from 0.58 to 0.73 across unconstrained coding schemes and structured coding matrix. Coding into the best-performing coding scheme resulted in category-specific κ scores ranging from 0.67 to 0.95 for the inductive approach and from 0.13 to 0.87 for the deductive approaches. ChatGPT largely followed prompt instructions in producing a description of each coding scheme, although the wording for the inductively developed coding schemes was lengthier than specified.
Conclusions
ChatGPT appears fairly reliable in assisting with qualitative analysis. ChatGPT performed better in developing an inductive coding scheme that emerged from the data than adapting an existing framework into an unconstrained coding scheme or coding directly into a structured matrix. The potential for ChatGPT to act as a second coder also appears promising, with almost perfect agreement in at least 1 coding scheme. The findings suggest that ChatGPT could prove useful as a tool to assist in each phase of qualitative content analysis, but multiple iterations are required to determine the reliability of each stage of analysis.
... However, it should be noted that sourcing the data to be analyzed from web-based forums may have implications for the quality of the output. Forum data are user generated and, by nature, less focused than data generated though targeted questions (eg, as is the case with interview and survey data), potentially leading to convoluted data [58]. In our study, this issue was partly circumvented by using secondary data that met certain eligibility criteria to ensure that they related to lived experiences of people trying to change sugar consumption [41]. ...
BACKGROUND
Data analysis approaches such as qualitative content analysis are notoriously time and labor intensive because of the time to detect, assess, and code a large amount of data. Tools such as ChatGPT may have tremendous potential in automating at least some of the analysis.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to explore the utility of ChatGPT in conducting qualitative content analysis through the analysis of forum posts from people sharing their experiences on reducing their sugar consumption.
METHODS
Inductive and deductive content analysis were performed on 537 forum posts to detect mechanisms of behavior change. Thorough prompt engineering provided appropriate instructions for ChatGPT to execute data analysis tasks. Data identification involved extracting change mechanisms from a subset of forum posts. The precision of the extracted data was assessed through comparison with human coding. On the basis of the identified change mechanisms, coding schemes were developed with ChatGPT using data-driven (inductive) and theory-driven (deductive) content analysis approaches. The deductive approach was informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework using both an unconstrained coding scheme and a structured coding matrix. In total, 10 coding schemes were created from a subset of data and then applied to the full data set in 10 new conversations, resulting in 100 conversations each for inductive and unconstrained deductive analysis. A total of 10 further conversations coded the full data set into the structured coding matrix. Intercoder agreement was evaluated across and within coding schemes. ChatGPT output was also evaluated by the researchers to assess whether it reflected prompt instructions.
RESULTS
The precision of detecting change mechanisms in the data subset ranged from 66% to 88%. Overall κ scores for intercoder agreement ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 across inductive coding schemes and from 0.58 to 0.73 across unconstrained coding schemes and structured coding matrix. Coding into the best-performing coding scheme resulted in category-specific κ scores ranging from 0.67 to 0.95 for the inductive approach and from 0.13 to 0.87 for the deductive approaches. ChatGPT largely followed prompt instructions in producing a description of each coding scheme, although the wording for the inductively developed coding schemes was lengthier than specified.
CONCLUSIONS
ChatGPT appears fairly reliable in assisting with qualitative analysis. ChatGPT performed better in developing an inductive coding scheme that emerged from the data than adapting an existing framework into an unconstrained coding scheme or coding directly into a structured matrix. The potential for ChatGPT to act as a second coder also appears promising, with almost perfect agreement in at least 1 coding scheme. The findings suggest that ChatGPT could prove useful as a tool to assist in each phase of qualitative content analysis, but multiple iterations are required to determine the reliability of each stage of analysis.
... These posts create a rich source of authentic content that can attract new customers, as people are more likely to trust and be influenced by content created by their peers rather than traditional advertising. The hashtag helps in aggregating the content, making it easy for other users to find and see the variety of dishes on offer, potentially leading to increased curiosity and visitation (McKenna et al., 2017). ...
This paper explores the significant impact of social media platforms on promoting food products within the Albanian market. In today's digital era, social media has transformed marketing strategies, offering food producers unparalleled opportunities for visibility, engagement, and influence. Through an extensive review of existing literature and case studies specific to Albania, this study investigates the various ways in which social platforms facilitate the promotion of food products in the Albanian context. It examines how brands leverage targeted marketing, user-generated content, influencer collaborations, and real-time feedback to reach and resonate with their Albanian audience. Additionally, the paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities presented by social media algorithms, ethical considerations, and shifting consumer preferences within the Albanian food industry. By understanding the dynamics of social media marketing within the Albanian market, businesses can develop tailored strategies to enhance brand awareness, foster consumer loyalty, and drive sales in this unique cultural and economic landscape. Received: 2 May 2024 / Accepted: 30 June 2024 / Published: 5 July 2024
... Organizations function and thrive thanks to their interlocking relational threads, which reflect sociocultural, environmental relationships. McKenna et al. (2017) have argued that such contemporary relationships unfold alongside "the emergence of social media…[which] provides qualitative researchers with a new window into people's outer and inner worlds, their experiences, and their interpretation of these" (p. 87). ...
The question of how to appropriately care for and share Indigenous knowledges is central to cultural heritage documentation and, contemporary archival praxes and discourses. Transforming the standards of Indigenous knowledge management (IKM) necessitates confronting the legacies of colonial control and Indigenous expurgation that settler colonial galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) have contributed to (intentionally or not). Writing of and within the Māori context in New Zealand, we argue that a renewed orientation toward dialogic collaboration between institutions and Indigenous communities is crucial for revitalizing archival practices and partnerships in ways that center Indigenous values. Moreover, we purport that aligning institutional practices with Indigenous values is insufficient if Indigenous communities are neither made to feel welcome within archival spaces nor empowered to utilize them. As such, we identify the notions of relationality, responsibility, and respect as vital in supporting this ethical transformation of Indigenous knowledge stewardship both in New Zealand and in other Indigenous contexts. We propose that current efforts to reshape IKM praxes in culturally responsible and responsive ways can be meaningfully expanded through dialogic engagement, and an ethics of care.
... Influencers share information related to their lives, habits, lived experiences, and opinions, making them appear more relatable and familiar, which in turn enables consumers to develop complex parasocial relationships with them (Aw & Chuah, 2021;Jin & Ryu, 2020). As SMIs rely on social media platforms characterized by user-generated content (McKenna et al., 2017), their opinions are naturally deemed to be of a user-generated nature and therefore are given enhanced value by consumers (Zhang et al., 2021). Ballestar et al. (2022) analyzed green influencers on Twitter and showed that they follow differential communication strategies to create awareness for their pro-environmental causes. ...
... Previous scholarship calls for additional research on the methodologies employed when working with social media data in education, as well as the conceptual purpose of shifting social media research in educational technology (Greenhow et al. 2019). Challenges like limited literature on protocol (McKenna et al. 2017) and concerns about rigour of social media data (Golder et al. 2017) influence researchers' decisions when conducting research using websites like Twitter toward the advancement of education research. ...
As Twitter’s (or X’s) influence permeates aspects of education, researchers must consider how to ethically and effectively leverage the unique types of data that this social media platform offers. This paper provides recommended methodological practice considerations for working with qualitative Twitter data toward the advancement of education research. To inform our methodological protocol, we draw from a larger study that investigated disability disclosure during graduate school on Twitter. We use examples from our study to highlight similar protocol considerations that future researchers might take when working with qualitative Twitter data, including use of the website’s advanced search feature and use of multifaceted analysis approaches for capturing this data’s often unique complexity. We further provide ethical considerations for conducting social media research in education. Finally, we discuss the utility of the practices described in this article for moving education research forward via qualitative Twitter data.
... We then started coding the data following an inductive qualitative coding scheme, which has gained prominence in the study of social media data (Levina & Vaast, 2015;McKenna et al., 2017;Vaast et al., 2017). The first step in our analysis was to code threads in the community according to the topic and the community response (emotional and technical) and their level of detail and complexity ). ...
In recent years, scholars have argued that entrepreneurs develop opportunities through social engagement in communities of peers. These entrepreneurial communities of peers, so-called communities of inquiry, are moving from the physical to the virtual realm as digital technologies proliferate society and entre-preneurial processes. However, little is known about how entrepreneurs partake in online communities and how this partaking may affect opportunity development. To improve knowledge on this matter, we analyzed 18,670 comments from four different entrepreneurship communities on Reddit. We find that online communities support entrepreneurial opportunity development by providing feedback, emotional support, and models that reduce uncertainty. By unpacking how online communities may support opportunity development, the paper contributes to the nascent stream on the social aspects of opportunity development and to the growing interest in digital entrepreneurship. KEYWORDS
... Leximancer is being used across a growing range of research areas where natural language is being studied, particularly where large amounts of text might be under analysis. Initially used by mainly business researchers, to understand conceptualizations of social responsibility by mining companies in annual reporting (Parsons and McKenna, 2005) for example, it has been extensively used by news and social media analysts to consider patterns of reporting (Spry and Dwyer, 2017), trends in opinion (Carah et al., 2016;McKenna et al., 2017) and image development (Tseng et al., 2015). Academic researchers have used Leximancer to investigate conceptual development in a range of academic fields: the history of ideas within a single journal (Rooney et al., 2011) and the development and use of terms: accountability in accounting (Crofts and Bisman, 2010) and corporate environmental performance (Poser et al., 2012). ...
Introduction
Australia’s National Quality Standard (NQS) outlines the criteria to assess the quality of early childhood services. A four-point rating scale: (i) Exceeding NQS; (ii) Meeting NQS; (iii) Working Toward NQS; and (iv) Significant Improvement Required is applied to services following a regular assessment and rating process. Settings rated as Working Toward are reassessed within 12 months. Most settings achieved a one-step improvement in this Time 2 reassessment, moving to a Meeting rating but some settings made a two-step improvement, moving to an Exceeding rating. The QIP is a key document used by authorities to assess the quality of a service.
Methods
A grounded theory, data driven approach was taken to deepen understanding of quality rating improvements in long day care services in Australia of quality rating improvements by early childhood education and care [ECEC] services in Australia. This study, part of the second phase of a three phase study involved a document analysis of the Time 2 Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs) of a representative sample of Long Day Care (LDC) services (n = 60) from all Australian states and territories to determine what factors may have contributed to these different levels of improvement, with a focus on Quality Area 1 (QA1) (Educational programs and practices) and Quality Area 7 (QA7) (Governance and leadership). The study utilized the semantic analysis tool Leximancer 4.5. Leximancer 4.5 statistically analyses the semantic relationships between concepts in documents by measuring word proximity and correlation. The software creates visual maps of concepts and their connections to each other in texts. Concepts located near one another on the map are more likely to be contextually related. This tool is particularly useful when there are multiple, complex documents to analyze, reducing the potential biases that can arise from documents that use language with which these researchers are very familiar with.
Results
The analysis found clear differences between the Time 2 QIPs of services who had made a two-step rating improvement and those who made a one-step improvement. Two-step (Exceeding NQS) category improvers for QA1 placed attention in their QIPs on improvement to the program and overall practice, with an orientation to the role of the educational leader. Two-step (Exceeding NQS) category improvers for QA7 seemed to be more oriented to a systemic view of the processes encompassed by QA7; how the management of the service and information supports the work of educators, with stronger links made between leadership roles (the manager and nominated supervisor) and the work of educators.
Discussion
The QIPs demonstrated how the intentional and systemic processes in these quality areas related to practice, management, and leadership.
... Interviews were used as a method for understanding the perspectives of Gen Z student job seekers and their uses of social media. To triangulate the findings, we also used social media observations (McKenna et al., 2017). ...
Purpose
This research aims to explore generation (Gen) Z's personal branding on social media when job seeking.
Design/methodology/approach
Gen Z students, in their final year of university, were interviewed about personal branding, as well as recruiters and career advisors to gain insights into the recruitment process and expectations of online personal brands. Before interviewing, Gen Z students' LinkedIn profiles were examined, and then fed into the interview process.
Findings
Using impression management theory, the findings show that Gen Z perceive online personal brands as a crucial tool to gain more advantage in job markets. A gap was found between desired and perceived selves in Gen Z's online personal brands. Strategies such as effective self-reflection, authentic communication, self-promotion processes, awareness of risks and constantly controlling digital footprints were suggested to build stronger and more coherent personal brands. Gen Z are in favour of a more dynamic, interactive, work-in-process of authentic personal brands.
Originality/value
This research demonstrates the importance of authentically building online personal branding strategies and tactics to bridge the divide between Gen Z's desired and perceived images in personal branding on social media when job seeking.
... These participants were not explicitly instructed to use these information sources, thereby demonstrating creativity and initiative to collect the contextual information they required using methodologies that were not part of the formal curriculum. Using social media as a source of information has been recommended in the design of information [91] and disaster relief systems [92], and as an information source to improve products based on user preferences [93]. Thus, there may be an opportunity to promote the incorporation of more accessible contextual information sources within student design projects by providing novice engineering designers with tools for synthesizing information available on social media and other crowd-sourced platforms. ...
Incorporation of contextual factors into design processes is important for successful engineering design outcomes. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we investigated the types of contextual factors incorporated by novice engineering designers and their approaches during design processes. Our findings demonstrated that participants primarily considered technical and institutional contextual factors across all design stages, informed largely by contextual observations and interviews with stakeholders. Socio-political contextual factors were less frequently considered. We also found that a broader set of contextual factors were incorporated when projects were set in unfamiliar contexts. And, contextual factors that could be easily quantified were more readily applied to design decisions. We suggest that there are opportunities for more intentional approaches to incorporating contextual factors throughout design processes.
... A közösségi média társadalomföldrajzi témájú kutatásmódszertani relevanciája, hogy megfelelően célzott kutatási kérdés és minta esetében lehetőség van a kvalitatív és kvantitatív kutatás ötvözésére, és nincs szükség hatalmas adatbázis felépítésére. Alapvetően kvantitatív, statisztikai elemzést alkalmaztunk, az adatgyűjtést viszont kvalitatív módon, a nyelvhasználati adatok kategorizálásával végeztük, amit a Kutatási módszer, adatgyűjtés című fejezetben ismertetünk (Mason 2005, McKenna et al. 2017. Az Instagram esetében a kvalitatív megközelítés különösen indokolt abból adódóan, hogy automatizált gyűjtésre kevésbé alkalmas (CBRO 2019), valamint a képi közlések tartalma sem elemezhető automatizáltan, speciális képelemző szoftverek és hatalmas adatbázisok nélkül. ...
Purpose
Drawing on objectification theory and literature exploring sex appeals and ethics in advertising, this paper aims to investigate how brand partnerships with sexualized influencers (both human and virtual) affect consumers’ trust in and attitude toward the partnering brand.
Design/methodology/approach
A pilot study determined that, akin to their human counterparts, virtual influencers are also sexualized. The effect of influencer sexualization on brand trust (Study 1) and attitude toward the brand (Study 2) is then examined. The moderating role of influencer type, with consumer perceptions of post offensiveness and ethical judgments as sequential mediators are tested in both studies.
Findings
When influencers are sexualized, regardless of whether they are human or virtual, brand outcomes are negatively impacted with participants reporting lower trust in and attitudes toward partnering brands, an effect mediated by post offensiveness and ethical judgments.
Research limitations/implications
This work contributes to the discourse on sexual appeals within the influencer realm and finds that, as it relates to sexualized content, consumers hold both human and virtual influencers to similar standards.
Practical implications
Results suggest that overtly sexual influencer posts (both human and virtual) are viewed as offensive and result in decreased consumer trust and attitudes toward partnering brands.
Originality/value
Research has yet to examine how consumers perceive brands that partner with sexually depicted influencers. This research is the first to explore the negative impact of sexualization of human and virtual influencers on partnering brands, and the underlying mechanisms that drive this relationship.
This study investigates how meaning is constructed and experienced in contemporary digital culture, focusing on interactivity as a key feature of the digital semiosphere. Building on biosemiotic concepts such as Umwelt and scaffolding, we develop a model that shifts semiotic analysis from traditional logocentric, discursive frameworks to one that emphasizes the dynamic and participatory nature of digital meaning. We argue that social media platforms represent a paradigm shift, where meaning is no longer a static informational construct but an experiential phenomenon shaped by user-platform interactions. We conceptualize social media as platfospheres—semiotic ecosystems where recursive cycles of interpretation and action shape users’ internal meaning models (Umwelts). Here, signs function not only as interpretative entities but as interactive sites, granting users semiotic agency to shape their meaning pathways. Applying this framework to X (formerly Twitter), we demonstrate how meaning is co-constructed through the platform’s participatory architecture, rendering semiosis a fluid, emergent process linked to users’ interpretation-interaction cycles. By framing meaning through biosemiotics, this approach reveals how digital platforms make meaning increasingly interactive, inferentially complex, fragmented, and time-sensitive, underscoring the need for ecological and interactive frameworks to capture the complexities of digital meaning-making.
Amaç: Sosyal medya günümüzde insan hayatının önemli parçalarından biri haline gelmiştir. İnsanların birbiriyle iletişim ve etkileşim için kullandığı sosyal medyanın kullanımının artması iletişimin yanında birçok alanda kullanılmasını sağlamıştır. Bu da onu, gelecek için korunması/ arşivlenmesi gereken bir arşiv nesnesi haline getirmiştir. Ancak bu durum, birtakım sorunları da ortaya çıkarmıştır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, sosyal medya içeriklerini arşivlemede karşılaşılan teknik, yasal ve etik sorunların neler olduğunu açıklamaktır. Yöntem: Betimleme yöntemi kullanılarak gerçekleştirilen bu çalışmada, sosyal medya arşivlemede karşılaşılan sorunlara ilişkin kütüphane, internet araştırması ve veri tabanlarının incelenmesi yoluyla literatür taraması yapılmıştır. Bulgular: Sosyal medyanın arşivlenmesinde karşılaşılan sorunlar; teknik, yasal ve etik olmak üzere üç başlıkta değerlendirilmiştir. Teknik sorunların sosyal medya içeriklerini seçme, yakalama/toplama, tanımlama, koruma, erişim, içeriklerin yapısı ve hacmi, içeriklerin türleri dijital beceri eksikliği, API’ler; yasal sorunların platform hizmet şartları, geliştirici politikaları, fikrî mülkiyet ve telif hakkı ve etik sorunların bilgilendirilmiş onay/onam (izin) ve gizlilik sorunları olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Sonuç: Sosyal medyanın arşivlenmesi platformlara ve platformlar tarafından oluşturulan hizmet şartları ile politikalara bağlı olduğundan sosyal medya içeriklerinin sahip olduğu teknik, yasal ve etik sorunların gelecekte de süreceği ve bu sorunların çözümlenmesine ihtiyaç olduğu öngörülmektedir. Özgünlük: Bu çalışma, Türkiye’de sosyal medya arşivlenmesinin teknik, yasal ve etik sorunlarını açıklayan öncü araştırmalardan biri niteliğindedir. Ayrıca bu çalışmanın gelecekte sosyal medya arşivleme konusundaki başka araştırmalara kaynaklık edebileceği, sosyal medya arşivlemesi ile ilgilenen kurumların ve araştırmacıların karşılaşabileceği sorunlara karşın yol gösterici olabileceği düşünülmektedir.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the extent, nature and communication potential of companies’ use of three popular social media platforms (Facebook, X and LinkedIn) to report on sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative methodology through the use of the netnography approach was adopted to evaluate the use of social media for sustainability communication by the Top 50 ASX companies. Content analysis of all company posts determined those with social and environmental content. A thematic analysis was performed using the global reporting initiative (GRI) framework to examine the nature of the reporting. The media richness framework was used to measure the communication potential of the social media platforms for sustainability communication.
Findings
The results indicated that the extent of sustainability posts on social media represented less than 20% of total social media posts. The nature of posts by the Top 50 ASX companies was higher on social issues than on environmental issues, which is contradictory to many previous studies. The study also found that while the social media platforms afforded high levels of media richness, most companies failed to exploit the platforms’ full potential to disseminate sustainability information.
Research limitations/implications
This work provides both empirical and theoretical contributions to the ongoing debate concerning the use of social media for sustainability communication. The paper extends Lodhia et al. ’s (2020) study of social media use for legitimation purposes and adapts Lodhia’s (2004) media richness framework to social media for sustainability reporting. It adds empirical insights into social media’s communication potential and value for communicating sustainability information.
Practical implications
The extent and nature to which organisations use social media to disclose their sustainability performance has significant practical implications for a variety of stakeholders. The results reveal to these stakeholders and the companies themselves the level of utilisation of social media along with the potential that can be harnessed. These results can potentially improve the quantity, timeliness and usability of sustainability reporting using social media platforms.
Social implications
The study provides valuable evidence to increase understanding of the sustainability social media communication landscape, which organisations can potentially leverage to communicate their messages. Additionally, sustainability awareness is increased across various demographics by disseminating sustainability information to the wider public. This study will assist policy-setters in developing guidance for using social media for sustainability reporting.
Originality/value
This study extends existing literature, particularly the Lodhia et al. (2020) study, which has primarily focused on examining sustainability content in the media with limited exploration of the communication potential of social media platforms to communicate sustainability content.
To date, most research amongst competitive bodybuilders has focused on highlighting the demands of competitive bodybuilding, competitors' emotional and behavioural responses to these demands, and the subsequent psychosocial outcomes, with limited attention to the process of coping. The current study aims to address this gap in the literature by providing insight into how competitors learn to manage and cope with the demands of their sport. Using a multiple-case study design, five high-profile competitive bodybuilders (with over 211,000 Instagram followers and 82,000 YouTube subscribers combined) engaged in semi-structured interviews and provided Instagram and personal journal data. Using reflexive thematic analysis, three overarching themes were constructed: (a) learning by trial and error, (b) understanding the self, the substances and the process, and (c) flexible guiding priorities. These findings have implications for informing future harm reduction initiatives amongst competitive bodybuilders (e.g., accelerating the experiential learning process), as well as enhancing social support for competitors (e.g., encouraging communal coping). Furthermore, this study illustrates the value of combining traditional methods (e.g., semi-structured interviews, journals) and social media data (e.g., Instagram posts, vlog style videos) when conducting qualitative case studies in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of interest.
The chapter examines the challenges and techniques for incorporating social media data into NVivo. NVivo allows three types of social media data to be used in the program: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube data. The chapter shows how this data can be imported into the program using the add-on NCapture. This tool facilitates the import to either textual formats (PDF) or database formats (matrices). Next, the chapter illustrates how the social media data can be coded and queried.
Purpose
This study aims to analyze memes as valuable engagement and marketing communication tools in promoting over-the-top (OTT) platforms by monitoring users' sentiments and offering insightful information about their opinions by drawing themes from viral memes.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis of 1,230 user interactions was conducted using NVivo software on Instagram and Twitter pages from May 2022 to July 2023. Data were collected for sentiment analysis (consumer responses), and relevant themes (consumer interactions) were drawn which created the virality of memes.
Findings
Research findings reveal relevant themes, such as relatable, informative and interest-generating, that make memes go viral over social media. The sentiment analysis results showed that the intensity and strength of the positive comments were more substantial, contributing more to the virality of memes.
Practical implications
These findings provide themes for engaging content for OTT advertisers to boost brand recognition and engagement by strategically creating meme content and implementing better marketing communication.
Originality/value
This study uses factual data to offer new perspectives on viral meme propagation. It provides evidence that OTT marketers boost brand value and customer engagement through innovative customer-centric social media analysis.
Research on gang-related content on social media in an African context is limited, if any exists at all, and this article provides an exploratory and descriptive narrative on this topic. The study establishes online geographies: mapping unique characteristics of the digital world, how it corresponds to the actual reality and what differences can be observed. Data were collected by conducting digital observation on TikTok, and only data originating from searches related to gangs in Cape Town, South Africa, were recorded. In this physical geographical location, TikTok facilitated new virtual territories in mainly two diverse online geographies. First is that of gang culture in the symbolic parading of the criminal life, exploring the creative abilities of TikTok. Gangs occupy the virtual space through communications, associations and threats. The second online geography is found in responses to gangs in the form of community activism and vigilantism, with a significant digital trajectory and aggressive material, aiming to facilitate social change.
In 2022, Stanford University’s Katie Meyer and at least four other college athletes in the United States died by suicide. If used appropriately, social media is a potential platform to destigmatize mental health through initiating discussions and providing educational resources. The study explores how Stanford University’s athletic department utilized Twitter to address mental health in the year after Meyer’s passing. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis, this study examined 59 tweets posted across Stanford University’s athletic department and program platforms. The current study found that Stanford’s social media messaging reinforced mental health stigma and the sport ethic across the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystem, which discourage sport consumers from changing their perceptions of mental health stigma in sport. Furthermore, the social media messaging does not demonstrate future institutional emphasis on mental health. We conclude with best practices for college sport administrators.
Despite the widespread presence of online referral programs, there is a notable gap in empirical research examining their influence on referrers. This study explores the impact of participation in online referral programs on the subsequent purchasing behavior of referrers, utilizing data from Vipshop, a prominent e-commerce platform. Vipshop has successfully expanded its social commerce operations by incentivizing existing customers to endorse products on various social media platforms. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, our findings reveal that involvement in an online referral program positively influences referrers to increase their purchases. Furthermore, this effect is significantly enhanced by the value of commissions and the ease of social referral. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for both theoretical understanding and practical application.
Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise lead to faulty implications being drawn, and - crucially - inaccurate strategies, decisions and actions. This handbook comprises three parts: Part I highlights many of the issues associated with 'unthinking digitalisation', particularly concerning the overreliance on algorithmic decision-making and the consequent need for qualitative research. Part II provides examples of the various qualitative methods that can be usefully employed in researching various digital phenomena and issues. Part III introduces a range of emergent issues concerning practice, knowing, datafication, technology design and implementation, data reliance and algorithms, digitalisation.
Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise lead to faulty implications being drawn, and - crucially - inaccurate strategies, decisions and actions. This handbook comprises three parts: Part I highlights many of the issues associated with 'unthinking digitalisation', particularly concerning the overreliance on algorithmic decision-making and the consequent need for qualitative research. Part II provides examples of the various qualitative methods that can be usefully employed in researching various digital phenomena and issues. Part III introduces a range of emergent issues concerning practice, knowing, datafication, technology design and implementation, data reliance and algorithms, digitalisation.
Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise lead to faulty implications being drawn, and - crucially - inaccurate strategies, decisions and actions. This handbook comprises three parts: Part I highlights many of the issues associated with 'unthinking digitalisation', particularly concerning the overreliance on algorithmic decision-making and the consequent need for qualitative research. Part II provides examples of the various qualitative methods that can be usefully employed in researching various digital phenomena and issues. Part III introduces a range of emergent issues concerning practice, knowing, datafication, technology design and implementation, data reliance and algorithms, digitalisation.
Voice is crucial for workers as it enables them to better their organizations and exert some degree of control over managerial decision-making. Yet, as workers increasingly find jobs on digital platforms in the gig economy, traditional channels of voice are being replaced by digital voice channels, such as online communities. To add knowledge on how voice takes form on such channels, we collected conversation data from two online communities, which function as official (Upwork community) and unofficial (Reddit community) digital voice channels for gig workers active on Upwork. Based on a qualitative analysis of both communities, we discovered that when gig workers voice in digital channels, they tend to frame their voice¸ including signals of status and group membership. This voice framing creates different factions, which then engage in voice modulation, amplifying in-group members and muting outgroup members. Thereby, our study teases out how voice takes form in digital channels and how it differs from voice in traditional organizations. Our study contributes to the growing research at the intersection of voice and digital platforms.
Drill, a sub-genre of hip-hop that emerged out of Chicago but is now a mainstay of United Kingdom youth street culture, often includes violent lyrics designed to antagonise rivals. This article draws on a longitudinal study with several drill artists to expand the academic understanding of this culture. Within this study, young people’s violent online personas are a response to inhabiting a social space that developed due to a nexus of factors, including social deprivation, a lack of informal guardianship and the rules of the online attention economy. This digital dynamic sees artists competing for viewers’ limited attention by producing exaggerated violent depictions to show cultural competence and embodied street capital as they vie for attention in an antagonistic continuum with other groups. As young people experience social spaces, not governed by the rules of the street, they often realise that their violent online persona’s utility is limited, leading to a rebranding of their digital self. The study concludes that young people’s involvement in online violence is usually a temporary response to the offline social spaces they inhabit. Attempts to address such activities should focus on young people’s offline and online experiences.
This methodology paper aims to offer useful guidelines for adopting social media in ethnography by reflecting on the two authors’ fieldwork experiences of using WeChat to investigate Chinese outbound tourists. The paper suggests social media as an effective tool to support data collection and analysis in ethnographic studies. Particularly, it helps to establish rapport with informants, collects various forms of data, assists in gaining a holistic understanding of the travel experience, makes good use of the fragmented time of participants to collect data, and improves the researcher’s wellbeing and effectiveness during fieldwork. In addition, the paper highlights the importance of reflecting on the embedded culture while adopting social media in ethnographic fieldwork. Barriers and challenges to using social media in ethnographic fieldwork are also discussed. We propose six recommendations and suggestions for researchers who may consider using social media in ethnography.
Background: The volatility and 24/7 nature of the cryptocurrency market allows traders to engage in highly speculative trading patterns that closely resemble gambling. Considering its potential for addiction and economic loss, it is important to investigate the impact that cryptocurrency trading has on mental health. Therefore, we analyzed Reddit discussions regarding mental health, gambling, and addiction from members of the discussion board, r/cryptocurrency, during a recent downturn in the market.
Method: We collected 1315 threads submitted to the subreddit r/cryptocurrency from January 3rd to February 4th 2022. A thematic analysis was employed, which included threads that discussed psychological wellbeing, mental health or gambling.
Results: We thematically analyzed the content threads that discussed psychological wellbeing, mental health or gambling. Our analysis identified three main themes present in user discussion. Theme 1 (emotional state and mental health) captured users’ discussion on their wellbeing, mental health and emotional responses to the market downturn. Theme 2 (strategies for coping) examined coping strategies recommended by users to combat distress or trading urges. Theme 3 (likeness to gambling) captured a discussion on the relationship between cryptocurrency and gambling based on its fixating properties and risk profile.
Conclusions: Reddit is a valuable resource for examining the experiences and attitudes of the cryptocurrency community. Discussion from users provided insight into the mental distress market downturns cause and strategies to help combat these. Our findings offer qualitative insights into the problems experienced by individuals who cryptocurrency trade and encourage further investigation into its relationship with mental health and addiction.
Previous research has been limited to investigating acceptance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) from a consumer-oriented perspective, thereby neglecting the numerous attitudes and behaviors emerging among multiple social actors and contexts. Moreover, methodological approaches based on surveys or interviews are limited in their ability to capture the full picture of public opinion due to the pre-defined nature of questioning and small sample size. Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, we investigate public discourse on AVs and base our qualitative analysis on conversation data (389′863 posts) from two related online communities on Reddit between January 2016 and March 2021. Four major streams of discussion are identified, namely Social, Economic, Ethical, and Legal dimensions. By systematically exploring and structuring the complex nature of public opinion on AVs, the present study contributes by enhancing our understanding on AV acceptance and providing implications for policy makers, stakeholders, and social science research.
In this paper we propose a framework to explain the possibilities of ICT in ICT4D. The PAR (Possibility, Action, Result) framework is based on the theoretical concepts of IS artifacts, affordances, and the capability approach, and is further refined by findings from an eGovernment project in Indonesia aiming to develop a digital platform to facilitate inclusive public debate for the citizens. The framework describes the process by which IS artifacts enable various action possibilities and choices. Furthermore, the framework shows how actors may realize their possibilities and choices, which in turn enhances their functioning. Our analysis also revealed the role of conversion factors, such as personal commitment and digital literacy, that hindered the actors' ability to actualize the possibilities of ICT. We make three main contributions. First, the PAR framework explains the process by which ICT can enhance individual and collective capabilities. Second, the concept of IS artifacts describes the perception of ICT possibilities and choices in the ICT4D context. Third, the process of feedback explains how an outcome of an action can lead to perception of new affordances.
Attaining sustainable resource management encompasses multilevel challenges and interdisciplinary
approaches from grassroots efforts to international agreements. In the context of coastal and marine management,
the complexities represented by the variety of local entities, regimes, and institutional supports are captured as
current challenges in sustainability efforts. Such challenges, unfortunately, persist in the group of customary
communities such as those of the Bajau, who live in coastal and marine areas. In an effort to address the
aforementioned challenges, this research proposes a model for integrating the Traditional Ecological Knowledge
(TEK) of the Bajau into Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA) scheme in Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi. A
qualitative approach involving multi-sited ethnography and interviews was employed in this study. TEK as a
concept is drawn upon to strengthen the local practices for sustainable resource use and therefore develop policy
recommendations. However, in the case of Bajau communities, the dimensions of the TEK encompass
conservation practices, ethno-fisheries, cultural beliefs, customary laws, weather and cultural astronomy, and
adaptive management. The manifestation of the TEK needs to add the term 'exchange knowledge' due to the
history and nature of former nomadic groups that interacted and exchanged knowledge and goods with other
groups with whom they were in contact. Intercultural relations between the Bajau and dominant customary groups
in Wakatobi position the Bajau as migrants and second-class people, both socio-culturally and in the context of
various conservation activities. The co-management programs that involve the Bajau do not seem to consider the
basic needs and practices of this group in current sustainable resource management. This situation indirectly
contributes to the marginalization and growing development threats for the Bajau in Wakatobi. In addition, the
complexities in the realm of contemporary Bajau society are not adequately considered in Wakatobi's
development priority programs. The culturally inclusive projects and LMMA model do not engage Bajau
communities, even though this group is pivotal in nurturing marine ecology in alignment with multiple TEK
practices and a maritime culture orientation. In brief, the output model of this research examines the various terms
to disentangle the challenges in cultural identity, intellectual property and rights, capacity building, livelihood
diversification, and communal space in the Bajau communities in Wakatobi. In advance of making
recommendations to implement the model, this research explored key attributes related to Bajau customary
institutions, local government, and Wakatobi National Park.
This book reflects on the rapid rise of social media across the African continent and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have invented to try to contain it.
The relentless growth of social media platforms in Africa has provided the means of resistance, self-expression, and national self-fashioning for the continent’s restlessly energetic and contagiously creative youth. This has provided a profound challenge to the African "gatekeeper state", which has often responded with strategies to constrict and constrain the rhetorical luxuriance of the social media and digital sphere. Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments’ clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship.
Drawing on a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, this book will be an important contribution to researchers with an interest in social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in transitional societies, censorship on the Internet, and Africa more broadly.
This essay discusses the use of big data analytics (BDA) as a strategy of inquiry for advancing information systems (IS) research. In broad terms, we understand big data analytics as the statistical modelling of large, diverse, and dynamic datasets of user-generated content and digital traces. BDA, as a new paradigm for utilising big data sources and advanced analytics, has already found its way into some social science disciplines. Sociology and economics are two examples that have successfully harnessed BDA for scientific inquiry. Often, BDA draws on methodologies and tools that are unfamiliar for some IS researchers (e.g., predictive modelling, natural language processing). Following the phases of a typical research process, this article is set out to dissect BDA’s challenges and promises for IS research, and illustrates them by means of an exemplary study about predicting the helpfulness of 1.3 million online customer reviews. In order to assist IS researchers in planning, executing, and interpreting their own studies, and evaluating the studies of others, we propose an initial set of guidelines for conducting rigorous BDA studies in IS.
This paper examines how a new actor category may emerge in a field of discourse through the new media of the Internet. Existing literatures on professional and organizational identity have shown the importance of identity claims and of the tensions surrounding "optimal distinctiveness" for new actors in a field, but have not examined the roles of new media in these processes. The literature on information technology (IT) and identity has highlighted the identity-challenging and identity-enhancing aspects of new IT use for existing actor categories but has not examined the dynamics associated with the emergence of new actor categories. Here, we investigate how a new actor category may emerge through the use of new media as a dynamic interaction of discursive practices, identity claims, and new media use. Drawing on findings from a case study of technology bloggers, we identified discursive practices through which a group of technology bloggers enacted claims of a distinctive identity in the joint construction of their discourse and in response to continuous developments in new media. Emergence of this new category was characterized by ongoing, opposing yet coexisting tendencies toward coalescence, fragmentation, and dispersion. Socio-technical dynamics underlying bloggers' use of new media and the actions of prominent ("A-list") bloggers contributed to these tendencies. We untangle theoretically the identity-enabling and identity-unsettling effects of new media and conceptualize the emergence of a new actor category through new media as an ongoing process in which the category identity may remain fluid, rather than progress to an endpoint.
Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users " live " within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actor-network theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented.
The individuals and organizations in a variety of industries are experimenting with new ways to use virtual worlds as a complementary means to the real world for communicating, collaborating, and organizing economic activity with the growth of broadband Internet access. One of the main assumptions cited as a key differentiator of virtual worlds over more traditional technologies is that there is something unique to the 3D environment of virtual worlds that provides a richer, more immersive experience. 3D environments are objectively rich because there is synchronous contact, the visual stimuli, objects, and environmental designs offer a variety of social cues, and communication occurs through multiple channels, including audio, visual, and text. Virtual worlds allow users to progress at their own pace, offering different levels of challenges and capabilities to ensure a skill-ability balance for users.
This article presents a brief account of research which embraced the notion of research participant choice by adopting a flexible approach to the medium through which the semi-structured interviews were conducted. The following short paper provides an insight into the ways in which using Skype as a research medium can allow the researcher to reap the well-documented benefits of traditional face-to-face interviews in qualitative research, while also benefiting from the aspects Holt suggests telephone interviews bring to such research.
In this article we review ethnographic research on the Internet and computer-mediated communication. The technologically mediated environment prevents researchers from directly observing research participants and often makes the interaction anonymous. In addition, in the online environment direct interaction with participants is replaced by computer-screen data that are largely textual, but may include combinations of textual, visual, aural, and kinetic components. We show how the online environment requires adjustments in how ethnographers define the setting of their research, conduct participant observation and interviews, obtain access to settings and research subjects, and deal with the ethical dilemmas posed by the medium.
The Internet is used across a range of disciplines to conduct qualitative research, and qualitative psychologists are increasingly turning to the Internet as a medium for conducting interviews. In this article, we explore the first author's experience of conducting synchronous online interviews using instant messaging or ‘chat’ software. We highlight the costs and benefits of conducting online interviews and reflect on the development of a rapport with participants within this medium. In particular, we consider how researchers can attempt to make online interviewing less abrupt and more conversational, how researchers can demonstrate ‘listening’ and how insider/outsider status of the interviewer affects interaction within online interviews.
The internet and its surrounding technologies hold the promise of reviving the public sphere; however, several aspects of these new technologies simultaneously curtail and augment that potential. First, the data storage and retrieval capabilities of internet-based technologies infuse political discussion with information otherwise unavailable. At the same time, information access inequalities and new media literacy compromise the representativeness of the virtual sphere. Second, internet-based technologies enable discussion between people on far sides of the globe, but also frequently fragmentize political discourse. Third, given the patterns of global capitalism, it is possible that internet-based technologies will adapt themselves to the current political culture, rather than create a new one. The internet and related technologies have created a new public space for politically oriented conversation; whether this public space transcends to a public sphere is not up to the technology itself.
Ethnographic research is one of the most in-depth research methods possible. Because the researcher is at a research site for a long time -and sees what people are doing as well as what they say they are doing – an ethnographer obtains a deep understanding of the people, the organization, and the broader context within which they work. Ethnographic research is thus well suited to providing information systems researchers with rich insights into the human, social, and organizational aspects of information systems. This article discusses the potential of ethnographic research for IS researchers, and outlines the most important issues that need to be considered in selecting this method.
In 2008, a group of researchers publicly released profile data collected from the Facebook accounts of an entire cohort of
college students from a US university. While good-faith attempts were made to hide the identity of the institution and protect
the privacy of the data subjects, the source of the data was quickly identified, placing the privacy of the students at risk.
Using this incident as a case study, this paper articulates a set of ethical concerns that must be addressed before embarking
on future research in social networking sites, including the nature of consent, properly identifying and respecting expectations
of privacy on social network sites, strategies for data anonymization prior to public release, and the relative expertise
of institutional review boards when confronted with research projects based on data gleaned from social media.
KeywordsResearch ethics-Social networks-Facebook-Privacy-Anonymity
The qualitative interview is one of the most important data gathering tools in qualitative research, yet it has remained an unexamined craft in IS research. This paper discusses the potential difficulties, pitfalls and problems of the qualitative interview in IS research. Building on Goffman’s seminal work on social life, the paper proposes a dramaturgical model as a useful way of conceptualizing the qualitative interview. Based on this model the authors suggest guidelines for the conduct of qualitative interviews.
The concept of Social Media is top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term “Social Media” exactly means; this article intends to provide some clarification. We begin by describing the concept of Social Media, and discuss how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, we present 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media.
Several credential systems have been proposed in which users can authenticate to service providers anonymously. Since anonymity can give users the license to misbehave, some variants allow the selective deanonymization (or linking) of misbehaving users upon a complaint to a Trusted Third Party (TTP). The ability of the TTP to revoke a user’s privacy at any time, however, is too strong a punishment for misbehavior. To limit the scope of deanonymization, some systems have been proposed in which users can be deanonymized only if they authenticate “too many times,” such as “double spending” with electronic cash. While useful in some applications, such techniques cannot be generalized to more subjective definitions of misbehavior, for example, using such schemes it is not possible to block anonymous users who “deface too many Web pages” on a Web site. We present BLAC, the first anonymous credential system in which service providers can revoke the credentials of misbehaving users without relying on a TTP . Since revoked users remain anonymous, misbehaviors can be judged subjectively without users fearing arbitrary deanonymization by a TTP . Additionally, our construction supports a d-strikes-out revocation policy, whereby users who have been subjectively judged to have repeatedly misbehaved at least d times are revoked from the system. Thus, for the first time, it is indeed possible to block anonymous users who have “defaced too many Web pages” using our scheme.
This department is devoted to research reports, notes, conference résumés and other significant research events. Two copies of write-ups, not exceeding 3,000 words, may be mailed to the Section Editor, Professor David A. Fennell, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1; e-mail: dfennell@arnie.pec.brocku.ca. In all cases, one copy of the report should be mailed to the Chief Editor, TRR.
Much research has been devoted over the years to investigating and advancing the techniques and tools used by analysts when they model. As opposed to what academics, software providers and their resellers promote as should be happening, the aim of this research was to determine whether practitioners still embraced conceptual modeling seriously. In addition, what are the most popular techniques and tools used for conceptual modeling? What are the major purposes for which conceptual modeling is used? The study found that the top six most frequently used modeling techniques and methods were ER diagramming, data flow diagramming, systems flowcharting, workflow modeling, UML, and structured charts. Modeling technique use was found to decrease significantly from smaller to medium-sized organizations, but then to increase significantly in larger organizations (proxying for large, complex projects). Technique use was also found to significantly follow an inverted U-shaped curve, contrary to some prior explanations. Additionally, an important contribution of this study was the identification of the factors that uniquely influence the decision of analysts to continue to use modeling, viz., communication (using diagrams) to/from stakeholders, internal knowledge (lack of) of techniques, user expectations management, understanding models' integration into the business, and tool/software deficiencies. The highest ranked purposes for which modeling was undertaken were database design and management, business process documentation, business process improvement, and software development. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The Leximancer system is a relatively new method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in a nunsupervised manner. It employs two stages of co-occurrence information extraction-semantic and relational-using a different algorithm for each stage. The algorithms used are statistical, but they employ nonlinear dynamics and machine learning. This article is an attempt to validate the output of Leximancer, using a set of evaluation criteria taken from content analysis that are appropriate for knowledge discovery tasks.
In this paper, we argue that information researchers should use images as a source of data. The information systems field is overwhelmingly visual in nature. Not only is the Internet crammed with images, but also almost every detail observed during fieldwork in different research settings can be captured in the form of digital images. Yet, we rarely engage with those images. Except for sporadic video recordings in analyzing human-computer interaction and, more recently, neurophysiological imaging, using images in information systems research has been sparse and non-systematic. Where images are used, the purpose of using them has been largely restricted to visually representing the context of the research setting. This approach underuses the knowledge embedded in visual material, which needs to be unpacked in a systematic fashion. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of visual research and illustrate via a three-step framework how images in information systems research can be collected, analyzed, and presented. We conclude with four considerations for researchers that can help them develop a visual research capacity in information systems and encourage researchers to engage with the images that are now a major feature of the information systems environment. © 2015 Association for Information Systems. All rights reserved.
Several credential systems have been proposed in which users can authenticate to service providers anonymously. Since anonymity can give users the license to misbehave, some variants allow the selective deanonymization (or linking) of misbehaving users upon a complaint to a Trusted Third Party (TTP). The ability of the TTP to revoke a user’s privacy at any time, however, is too strong a punishment for misbehavior. To limit the scope of deanonymization, some systems have been proposed in which users can be deanonymized only if they authenticate “too many times,” such as “double spending” with electronic cash. While useful in some applications, such techniques cannot be generalized to more subjective definitions of misbehavior, for example, using such schemes it is not possible to block anonymous users who “deface too many Web pages” on a Web site.
We present BLAC, the first anonymous credential system in which service providers can revoke the credentials of misbehaving users without relying on a TTP . Since revoked users remain anonymous, misbehaviors can be judged subjectively without users fearing arbitrary deanonymization by a TTP . Additionally, our construction supports a d-strikes-out revocation policy, whereby users who have been subjectively judged to have repeatedly misbehaved at least d times are revoked from the system. Thus, for the first time, it is indeed possible to block anonymous users who have “defaced too many Web pages” using our scheme.
This paper builds a process theory of how participants in an online community deal with a new identity threat. Based upon the in-depth, interpretive case study of an online community of retail bankers, it develops a grounded theory that reveals that participants in an online community deal with new taint by protecting their occupation's identity but not by attempting to repair its external image. In the investigated community, reactions progressed from rejecting the taint to distancing from it and, finally, resigning to it. Overall, the dynamics of an occupational online community reveal that the objective of protecting the existing identity of its members supersede that of taking a more proactive stance to address the identity threat and attempt to influence new regulations affecting the occupation.
This study explores the role of social media in social change by analyzing Twitter data collected during the 2011 Egypt Revolution. Particular attention is paid to the notion of collective sense making, which is considered a critical aspect for the emergence of collective action for social change. We suggest that collective sense making through social media can be conceptualized as human-machine collaborative information processing that involves an interplay of signs, Twitter grammar, humans, and social technologies. We focus on the occurrences of hashtags among a high volume of tweets to study the collective sense-making phenomena of milling and keynoting. A quantitative Markov switching analysis is performed to understand how the hashtag frequencies vary over time, suggesting structural changes that depict the two phenomena. We further explore different hashtags through a qualitative content analysis and find that, although many hashtags were used as symbolic anchors to funnel online users' attention to the Egypt Revolution, other hashtags were used as part of tweet sentences to share changing situational information. We suggest that hashtags functioned as a means to collect information and maintain situational awareness during the unstable political situation of the Egypt Revolution.
Article Summary Discussion of the political impact of social media has focused on the power of mass protests to topple governments. In fact, social media's real potential lies in supporting civil society and the public sphere — which will produce change over years and decades, not weeks or months. On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the decision was announced, thousands of Filipinos, angry that their corrupt president might be let off the hook, converged on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major crossroads in Manila. The protest was arranged, in part, by forwarded text messages reading, "Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk." The crowd quickly swelled, and in the next few days, over a million people arrived, choking traffic in downtown Manila. The public's ability to coordinate such a massive and rapid response — close to seven million text messages were sent that week — so alarmed the country's legislators that they reversed course and allowed the evidence to be presented. Estrada's fate was sealed; by January 20, he was gone. The event marked the first time that social media had helped force out a national leader. Estrada himself blamed "the text-messaging generation" for his downfall. Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide, involving many actors — regular citizens, activists, nongovernmental organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, governments. This raises an obvious question for the U.S.
Digitally enabled social networks (DESN) are a complex assemblage of engagement, reflection, action, technology, organization and community. DESN create a unique challenge for researchers who aim to understand what social networks are, what they can become and what enablers and constraints underlie trajectories of member engagement. As DESN continually evolve, knowing them as stable and reified representations or as mere technology artefacts provides a limited understanding of their complexity and emergent properties. While DESN are, in part, the technology that supports the necessary actions for engagement, they are also the people and behaviours that constitute its community. Through the presentation of new methodological considerations towards Digg, a large DESN, we observe that social networks entail practices of engagement, change and evolution within a DESN community. We reveal how engagement is a communal endeavour and that the clash of socio-technical trajectories can result in the emergence of new paths of member participation. Our findings demonstrate the potential of netnography and impressionist tales for contributing to the ongoing pluralistic investigations of DESN and also inform research on engagement and community design and change.
Purpose ‐ This paper seeks to present the Black blogosphere's discussion of the Jena 6 case to uncover how ethnic identity is performed discursively to promote social activism. Design/methodology/approach ‐ Through an analysis of Black blog postings reporting on the Jena 6 case, this case study chronicles the way in which Black audiences responded to this news story. The research chronicles the ways in which Black audiences responded to the Jena 6 news story and how Black blogs expanded participation in the discussion of events related to Black interests. Findings ‐ The findings point to critiques of dominant cultural meanings about race relations and racial injustice. In addition, the findings suggest that social media has become an additional medium that is effectively used by African Americans' in their historical struggle for civil rights. By chronicling the ways in which Black audiences responded to this news story, the paper demonstrates that Black blogs provide a useful space for discussing perceived racial injustice from a diverse African American cultural perspective. Moreover, Black bloggers are able to raise awareness of racial injustice within both the Black community and the broader US society and mobilize collective action. Practical implications ‐ New divides may be emerging because of limitations on what you can do on a mobile device. This increase in mobile internet access and the accompanying differences in internet experience heightens the need for studies that examine culturally salient behavioral aspects of use and interpersonal relationships characterized by social support, communication, and resource sharing. Originality/value ‐ Through an analysis of Black blog postings reporting on the Jena 6 case, this study chronicles the way in which Black audiences responded to this news story. The findings point to critiques of dominant cultural meanings about race relations and racial injustice. In addition, our findings suggest that the momentum of this social movement was based in the political and economic dynamics of a community; however, social media is enabling critical global, yet vigorous conversion of activism
The rise of social broadcasting technologies has greatly facilitated open access to information worldwide, not only by powering decentralized information production and consumption, but also by expediting information diffusion through social interactions like content sharing. Voluntary information sharing by users in the context of Twitter, the predominant social broadcasting site, is studied by modeling both the technology and user behavior. A detailed data set about the official content-sharing function on Twitter, called retweet, is collected and the statistical relationships between users' social network characteristics and their retweeting acts are documented. A two-stage consumption-sharing model is then estimated using the conditional maximum likelihood estimatio (MLE) method. The empirical results convincingly support our hypothesis that weak ties (in the form of unidirectional links) are more likely to engage in the social exchange process of content sharing. Specifically, we find that after a median quality tweet (as defined in the sample) is consumed, the likelihood that a unidirectional follower will retweet is 3.1 percentage point higher than the likelihood that a bidirectional follower will do so.
The current level of satisfaction among different stakeholders about the current approaches and practises of financial reporting of not‐for‐profit (NFP) entities is underexplored (Christensen and Mohr, 2003; Lee, 2004; Gray et al., 2006; Parker, 2007). This paper uses content analysis to examine submissions to the 2008 Australian Senate Economics Standing Committee for its inquiry into the disclosure regimes of charities and NFP organisations, which aimed to explore attitudes about financial reporting in the NFP sector. Financial reporting is viewed as an important part of accountability, but the sector identifies deficiencies in the current regime in terms of consistency, efficiency and transparency. Respondents to this inquiry believed that a sector‐specific accounting standard was important. Financial reporting standards, regulations and legal structures should be uniform across the entire sector, but with some variation allowed for smaller NFPs. The cost of complying with standards was a significant issue for smaller NFPs.
The venues in which we carry out our fieldwork increasingly intertwine real and virtual activities as participants move materials and interactions online. This change in the nature of the field sites we observe requires an enhancement or even rethinking of traditional methodologies for studying work. This article draws on two studies—one in a distributed corporation and one of an online master's degree program—to outline some of the questions these settings raised and ways in which the ethnographers addressed them in the field. Technology-mediated settings require us to rethink concepts of presence and colocation, just as those we study must rethink them in the course of their own day-to-day interactions.
This review surveys and divides the ethnographic corpus on digital media into three broad but overlapping categories: the cultural politics of digital media, the vernacular cultures of digital media, and the prosaics of digital media. Engaging these three categories of scholarship on digital media, I consider how ethnographers are exploring the complex relationships between the local practices and global implications of digital media, their materiality and politics, and their banal, as well as profound, presence in cultural life and modes of communication. I consider the way these media have become central to the articulation of cherished beliefs, ritual practices, and modes of being in the world; the fact that digital media culturally matters is undeniable but showing how, where, and why it matters is necessary to push against peculiarly narrow presumptions about the universality of digital experience.
Purpose
The paper has a dual purpose, being to report on an interrogation of concepts and contexts of accountability used in the accounting literature and to illustrate the application of a qualitative data analysis software tool in this interrogation.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis was undertaken of 114 journal articles related to accountability and published in highly ranked accounting journals from 2000 to 2007.
Findings
Accountability is a concept used in a variety of contexts, particularly in connection with public accountabilities and accountability in the public sector, as well as within social contexts. The emphasis appears to be on accountability reporting in these settings, with less concern for the management perspective. The variety of contextual usage and categorisations of the term “accountability” indicate it has not become more precise over the period in question.
Research limitations/implications
Since only 21 accounting journals are sampled, there is scope for investigating accountability concepts across a broader base of publication outlets. The findings suggest that greater effort should be devoted to developing frameworks of accountability, researching accountability in relatively under‐explored contexts and settings, and considerable scope for researchers to more frequently utilise computer‐assisted qualitative data analysis in content analysis studies concerning accounting and accountability.
Originality/value
While there is anecdotal evidence of the elusive nature of accountability, this paper provides a window on conceptions of accountability employed by accounting scholars and the contexts in which accountability is discussed and researched. Further, the use of the Leximancer software tool in qualitative content analysis is demonstrated, noting that the accounting literature is currently devoid of examples of applications of this software.
This paper examines what can be learned about bodies of literature using a concept mapping tool, Leximancer. Statistical content analysis and concept mapping were used to analyse bodies of literature from different domains in three case studies. In the first case study, concept maps were generated and analysed for two closely related document sets—a thesis on language games and the background literature for the thesis. The aim for the case study was to show how concept maps might be used to analyse related document collections for coverage. The two maps overlapped on the concept of “language”; however, there was a stronger focus in the thesis on “simulations” and “agents.” Other concepts were not as strong in the thesis map as expected. The study showed how concept maps can help to establish the coverage of the background literature in a thesis. In the second case study, three sets of documents from the domain of conceptual and spatial navigation were collected, each discussing a separate topic: navigational strategies, the brain's role in navigation, and concept mapping. The aim was to explore emergent patterns in a set of related concept maps that may not be apparent from reading the literature alone. Separate concept maps were generated for each topic and also for the combined set of literature. It was expected that each of the topics would be situated in different parts of the combined map, with the concept of “navigation” central to the map. Instead, the concept of “spatial” was centrally situated and the areas of the map for the brain and for navigational strategies overlaid the same region. The unexpected structure provided a new perspective on the coverage of the documents. In the third and final case study, a set of documents on sponges—a domain unfamiliar to the reader—was collected from the Internet and then analysed with a concept map. The aim of this case study was to present how a concept map could aid in quickly understanding a new, technically intensive domain. Using the concept map to identify significant concepts and the Internet to look for their definitions, a basic understanding of key terms in the domain was obtained relatively quickly. It was concluded that using concept maps is effective for identifying trends within documents and document collections, for performing differential analysis on documents, and as an aid for rapidly gaining an understanding in a new domain by exploring the local detail within the global scope of the textual corpus.
The WSIS is centrally interested in knowledge and has defined for itself a mission that is broadly humanitarian. Its development ‘talk’ is, rightly, replete with notions of equity, preserving culture, justice, human rights and so on. In incorporating such issues into knowledge society and economy discussions, WSIS has adopted a different posture towards knowledge than is seen in dominant discourses. This study analyses the dominant knowledge discourse using a large corpus of knowledge-related policy documents, discourse theory and an interrelational understanding of knowledge. I show that it is important to understand this dominant knowledge discourse because of its capacity to limit thought and action in relation to its central topic, knowledge. The results of this study demonstrate that the dominant knowledge discourse is technocratic, frequently insensitive to the humane mission at the core of the WSIS, and is based on a partial understanding of what knowledge is and how knowledge systems work. Moreover, I show that knowledge is inherently political, that the dominant knowledge discourse is politically oriented towards the concerns of business and technology, but that an emancipatory politics of knowledge is possible.
Information systems research methods need to contribute to the
scholarly requirements of the field of knowledge but also need to
develop the potential to contribute to the practical requirements of
practitioners' knowledge. This leads to possible conflicts in choosing
research methods. Argues that the changing world of the IS practitioner
is reflected in the changing world of the IS researcher and that
qualitative approaches to IS research help to bridge the gap between the
two domains of knowledge. Illustrates how this gap may be bridged
through discussing the ethnographic research method. Concludes by
assessing the contributions and limitations of this method to IS
research and practice.
Ethical aspects of the employment of web crawlers for information science research and other contexts are reviewed. The difference between legal and ethical uses of communications technologies is emphasized as well as the changing boundary between ethical and unethical conduct. A review of the potential impacts on web site owners is used to underpin a new framework for ethical crawling and it is argued that delicate human judgments are required for each individual case, with verdicts likely to change over time. Decisions can be based upon an approximate cost-benefit analysis, but it is crucial that crawler owners find out about the technological issues affecting the owners of the sites being crawled in order to produce an informed assessment.
Interpretive research in information systems (IS) is now a well-established part of the field. However, there is a need for more material on how to carry out such work from inception to publication. I published a paper a decade ago (Walsham, 1995) which addressed the nature of interpretive IS case studies and methods for doing such research. The current paper extends this earlier contribution, with a widened scope of all interpretive research in IS, and through further material on carrying out fieldwork, using theory and analysing data. In addition, new topics are discussed on constructing and justifying a research contribution, and on ethical issues and tensions in the conduct of interpretive work. The primary target audience for the paper is less-experienced IS researchers, but I hope that the paper will also stimulate reflection for the more-experienced IS researcher and be of relevance to interpretive researchers in other social science fields.
The multimodal, 3D-graphical communication platforms known as virtual worlds have their historical roots in multi-user domains/dungeons (MUDs) and virtual reality (VR). Given the extensive research on these technologies and the novelty of virtual worlds as a topic of study in information systems (IS), it behooves us to learn from the concepts, theories and insights generated primarily by other disciplines that have focused on these technologies. Because neither MUDs nor VR have significant organizational application, thus locating them outside of the IS discipline’s purview, very little of this literature has found its way into IS research thus far. This article reviews the extant literature on virtual environments and seeks to make its insights accessible to IS research on virtual worlds. In particular, this will focus on concepts, theories and insights regarding embodiment and presence, which are afforded by the avatar, a distinguishing technological artifact of virtual worlds.
In this study, we focus on the relationship between Internet social networks and societal change by examining case studies of the impact of Internet-based campaigns in Iran. Ivan Illich's theory of ‘Conviviality of Tools’ enables an analysis of the conviviality of the Internet. Subsequently, this conceptual lens is used to examine empirical data from two Internet-based campaigns. The paper contributes theoretical and practical implications regarding conviviality of Internet social networks and the accomplishment of conviviality in society. Our findings show that Internet conviviality cannot be treated as an independent variable with deterministic outcomes on society, but as a technology that is shaped by ongoing economic and political forces. The Iranian Internet social networks are not universally accessible, frequently induce fragmented, nonsensical, and enraged discussion and its potential as a tool of liberation is tempered by the Iranian government adaption of systems of surveillance and censorship. We argue that the findings of this study have some general implications of value to researchers studying computerisation movements and Internet social networks in other countries.
This paper discusses the importance of being able to efficiently profile enterprise risks in the dynamic and highly competitive international markets in which large computer companies operate. While the continuous management and reporting of enterprise risks is largely driven by individual country laws and corporate regulation, the analysis and profiling of the risks remains a substantial analytical and interpretive task in its own right. This paper outlines a series of experimental procedures and results for multi-year enterprise risk profiling based on the deployment of the Leximancer software tool. We show that the software tool enables the identification of the risk themes, concepts, and ideas from the screening and contextual analysis of business reports and corporate data. The study focuses on the key enterprise risks disclosed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission by the Dell, Hewlett Packard, and IBM companies over the period 1995–2005.
There has been an increase in recent years in the number of in-depth case studies which focus on human actions and interpretations surrounding the development and use of computer-based information systems (IS). This paper addresses philosophical and theoretical issues concerning the nature of such interpretive case studies, and methodological issues on the conduct and reporting of this type of research. The paper aims to provide a useful reference point for researchers who wish to work in the interpretive tradition, and more generally to encourage careful work on the conceptualisation and execution of case studies in the information systems field.
Manual para la investigación cualitativa en ciencias sociales, en el que se presentan -paso a paso- técnicas para recoger, enfocar y analizar datos cualitativos.
Obra sobre las características y métodos de la investigación cualitativa, desde la planeación del proyecto hasta la interpretación del material. Incluye un panorama sobre los desarrollos recientes en la materia.