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A netnographic sensibility: developing the netnographic/social listening boundaries
Journal of Marketing Management
Abstract
Netnography is constantly evolving as technologies and access to online data develop. Our paper outlines how large data sets of social media can be analysed through bridging the divide between the small, rich and contextually nuanced data that is the hallmark of netnography and the scope and scale of data made possible through social media listening conventions. We define this approach as netnographic sensibility and with the use of a short case study discuss the process through which social media data could be gathered, triangulated and analysed. We orientate the paper around two interrelated questions: investigating how netnographic insights can be extended using social media monitoring tools, and asking how this can be used to add richness and depth to understanding mass consumer realities. Our contribution complements the widely established methodological approach of netnography as we argue that netnography has the capacity and capability to embrace technological advances within the domain of social listening to add value for academic researchers.
... Empirically, we combine some principles of netnographic sensibility (Reid & Duffy, 2018) with the digital method approach (Caliandro, 2018;Caliandro & Gandini, 2017;Rogers, 2013) to study pro-gun YouTubers in Brazil -an under-investigated context dominated by conservative and illiberal audiences (Ulver, 2022), which regularly attack institutions (e.g. traditional media, NGOs, left-wing political parties, politicians) and progressive groups (e.g. ...
... This study was conducted by combining some principles of netnographic sensibility (Reid & Duffy, 2018) with the digital methods approach (Caliandro, 2018;Caliandro & Gandini, 2017;Rogers, 2013). We started by exploring several social media platforms -YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, before deciding which was more appropriate for our research purposes. ...
... The data collection followed the principle of combining a traditional netnographic sensibility for the phenomena with the capacities of scale, depth and the systematic approach of web scraping tools (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Through an initial netnographic immersion, the first author searched for 'guns' as a keyword and listed nine YouTube channels that seemed central to the topic, also using the platform feature 'related channels'. ...
There is growing concern about the proliferation of radical groups and violent content on social media platforms such as YouTube. These platforms present unique capacities to promote radicalised content, as they allow the flourishing of digital creators who amass large audiences and communicate their ideas in a compelling video format. Notwithstanding, consumer research has not yet provided a conceptualisation of such antagonistic online consumer gatherings in the ephemeral social media context. We investigate this phenomenon by combining netnographic sensibility with digital methods to explore the case of pro-gun YouTubers in Brazil. We propose the notion of online consumer counterpublics, which are online consumer collectives socio-technically shaped and promoted by social media influencers and their audiences on social media platforms based on strong oppositional discourses, ideas, affectivities, and values associated with a consumption topic, and who develop a compelling counter-hegemonic social identity.
... Triangulation (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011) supported thematic data analysis by ratifying employee participant comments through the use of qualitative data captured by the organisation's in-house digital engagement survey, which was deployed once, after the completion of the last redundancy programme. The use of triangulation of social media with other sources has been argued to allow for more rounded data that offers detailed perspective (Reid and Duffy, 2018). This paper is structured as follows. ...
... Internet research is defined as a "tool and also a field site for research" (Markham and Buchanan, pg. 3, 2012). Netnography (Kozinets, 2002) presents a relatively new approach to digital, qualitative data collection which is evolving at pace as access to online data and technologies develop continuously (Reid and Duffy, 2018). Escobar (1994) challenged the integration of using new technologies and community and fieldwork research at a time when the digital domain was regarded as a subculture and an isolated place. ...
... Data was analysed through thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) which consisted of various stages such as data familiarisation, code generation, and identification and formation of themes (Östlund et al., 2011(Östlund et al., , Baran, 2016. The use of thematic, or content, analysis is supported by Reid and Duffy (2018) as a sensible approach to the categorising of netnographic data. While other popular methods of analysing online conversations often take data-centric approaches (Gandomi and Haider, 2015), where the number of likes and followers are used to analyse the data, this approach offered little benefit to data interpretation in the current study and no real meaning was gained by reviewing the number of 'likes' or 'dislikes' -partially in this case due to the low response rate and interaction elicited from this method. ...
This paper reports on the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of the qualitative methodology of netnography, an interpretative method which represents a written description of fieldwork emerging from on-line or computer mediated data. Specifically, a humanist netnography which focussed on answering research questions connected with deep social values with the aim to influence social change within the context of business and management research was applied. Over the course of 26 months, a total of 2033 comments from a bespoke, in-house social media monitoring tool were analysed and ratified through triangulation with 107 posts from an engagement survey. The data was captured within an automation and engineering organisation in the private sector in England. The context of the study was to use netnographic research to explore the impact on employees subjected to the implementation of multiple, consecutive redundancy programmes. The aim was to understand areas of concern for employee wellbeing and identify opportunities to improve the redundancy implementation strategy. Humanist netnography was applied to allow a specific focus on the culture of the community within the organisational setting, and the emotions experienced amongst employees within this community. The findings highlight that netnograhic research can offer rich and meaningful data when used in a controlled, digital environment for organisations as well as for academic research. This study discusses the opportunities associated with netnography and how the use of in-house bespoke social media monitoring tools can help drive and improve organisational effectiveness. In addition, this paper identifies challenges associated with the use of netnography such as the little perceived value of emoticons defined as symbolic netnography, as real meaning were found in the expressed words. Concerns with respect to ethical considerations and protecting individual participants when using netnographic data are discussed.
... Something that is made possible through the use of Digital Technologies for Information and Communication (DTIC). This aspect has gained greater acceptance among the public and researchers from the popularization of social networks and video call interaction applications (Dean, 2019;Reid & Duffy, 2018). Resuming the understanding that online interviews are relevant for CCT and the growing use and popularization of online consumption practices (Kozinets et al., 2016;Expanding Consideration based on how online methods correspond to one of the possibilities presented by Arnould and Thompson (2015) to expand the filed investigation agenda. ...
... Thus, it is justified by despite the contemporary importance of electronic devices in people's lives, marketing research still shows some resistance to exclusively online techniques and methods (Reid & Duffy, 2018). It is the efforts to naturalize online qualitative research methods that have emerged to investigate objects in the field (i.e., netnography). ...
... Studies that deal with phenomena linked to marketplace cultures (Alhashem et al., 2021;Berge, 2017;Corciolani, 2014;Daskalopoulou & Skandalis, 2019;Dessart et al., 2016;Feiereisen et al., 2020;Figueiredo &) Scaraboto, 2016;Gamble, 2019;Gordon-Wilson, 2021;Goulart Sztejnberg & Giovanardi, 2017;Harwood & Garry, 2010;Koponen & Mustonen, 2020;Oakes et al., 2014;Philip et al., 2015;Podoshen et al. ., 2014;Reid & Duffy, 2018;Scarabot, 2015;Scarborough & McCoy, 2016;Turunen & Pöyry, 2019) use DTIC to investigate phenomena that work exclusively online, or a large part of consumer relations are established virtually. Mainly dealing with collective consumption relationships (i.e., branded virtual communities, consumer subcultures), the works explore how the context of the Web has modified these relationships. ...
Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is the consumer research culturalist tradition. With the deterritorialization of culture, networked cultural connections fluidly encompass social and economic dynamics. The Internet has become a cultural network that allows for mediated social interactions. In this context, online interviews emerged as an adaptation of face-to-face interviews and a means of accessing individuals from physically dispersed cultural contexts, therefore, suitable for the CCT agenda. Thus, this research seeks to characterize the use of qualitative online interviews through Digital Technologies for Information and Communication in CCT research. To this end, we analyzed a research corpus composed of articles that adopted the online interview. The articles were published in the main international marketing journals recognized for publishing works in the culturalist tradition of consumer research. We identified that online interviews have gain resonance in the field, through different qualitative research methods, with a focus on access to spatially dispersed consumers. However, little emphasis has been given to the operationalization of the interviews. Thus, we concluded that discussions about the technique's use would be suitable for its broader and more transparent adoption.
... Nike, the global athletics company celebrates the launch of its 'AirMax' shoe each year on March 26 (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Consumer, supporters, advocates and increasingly influencers use the hashtag #AirMaxDay to disseminate user generated content and join a community in celebration of the iconic sneaker (Reid & Duffy, 2018) The purpose of the day for Nike is to encourage consumer to add to their collection (Reid & Duffy, 2018), while advocating for the brand through a multimodal display of connection with the event. ...
... Nike, the global athletics company celebrates the launch of its 'AirMax' shoe each year on March 26 (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Consumer, supporters, advocates and increasingly influencers use the hashtag #AirMaxDay to disseminate user generated content and join a community in celebration of the iconic sneaker (Reid & Duffy, 2018) The purpose of the day for Nike is to encourage consumer to add to their collection (Reid & Duffy, 2018), while advocating for the brand through a multimodal display of connection with the event. This case provides a political setting and highlights the differences in the way social media messages are organised on different platforms. ...
... Nike, the global athletics company celebrates the launch of its 'AirMax' shoe each year on March 26 (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Consumer, supporters, advocates and increasingly influencers use the hashtag #AirMaxDay to disseminate user generated content and join a community in celebration of the iconic sneaker (Reid & Duffy, 2018) The purpose of the day for Nike is to encourage consumer to add to their collection (Reid & Duffy, 2018), while advocating for the brand through a multimodal display of connection with the event. This case provides a political setting and highlights the differences in the way social media messages are organised on different platforms. ...
The authors develop a multimodal social listening analysis (MSLA) approach as a framework for managers to understand how meaning is constructed in social media posts using both text and other media. The research adds to AI and text analysis approaches by considering the whole meaning of a post rather than an analysis of subsets of information in text and other media. The use of MSLA is validated across the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The findings show that MSLA helps (i) reveal structures in what appear to be unstructured multimodal posts; (ii) identify all the sentiment items in a post; (iii) identify implicit meanings, such as irony, humour and sarcasm; and (iv) further identify emotions and judgements in multimodal communication. Importantly, this paper explains how decisions and opinions are made online and how marketing strategies can be tailored towards meanings derived from multimodal communication in social media.
... The internet and social media are ever-changing; similarly, netnographic methods and how we define them must evolve (Bowler Jr., 2010;Lugosi et al., 2018;Morais et al., 2020). Developing technologies for users and researchers thus creates the need to advance and redefine the methods (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Netnographic methods have been used to study nature tourism social media by, for example, Conti and Heldt Cassel (2020) and Conti and Lexhagen (2020), who used netnography to understand the expression of the liminality of nature tourism and tourism value creation through social media imagery. ...
... Algorithm-based data sampling is often seen as biased and unreliable; the critics claim the "reality" presented is determined by uncontrollable and unknown forces. However, algorithm-based sampling also enables the observation of the phenomena in the same manner it happened initially (Kozinets, 2019;Reid et al., 2018), which is an essential characteristic of netnographic studies. Therefore, it is important to note that in this research, the data gathered from Facebook for quantitative analysis should not be regarded as fully representative of all visitors to Kilpisjärvi. ...
Visual representations of destinations have always inspired travellers. Commissioned paintings were employed to promote the allure of untouched nature, challenging earlier perceptions of perilous wilderness. Staged photographs, postcards, and popular media served similar promotional purposes. However, the advent of social media has brought about a significant shift. It’s no longer just about sharing holiday snapshots with friends back home. Through global social media platforms, visitors inspire others about where to visit and what to see. This shift from traditional media to user-generated content means that social media users now have an impact on the tourist gaze outside government policies, environmental planning, or visitor management control. At the same time, managers of protected recreational areas have faced the challenge of meeting the needs of increased outdoor recreation and visitations to protected areas while safeguarding their ecological integrity. The increasing influence of social media as travel inspiration highlights the need for a better understanding of how social media impacts visitors and its potential contributions to visitor management. In this study, I explored how social media impacts visitors gaze in protected nature recreational areas, using the example of Kilpisjärvi and the Käsivarsi Wilderness Area in northwestern Finnish Lapland. The research question is divided into three sub-questions: 1) What is posted on social media about visits to Kilpisjärvi and the Käsivarsi Wilderness Area? 2) How does this content reinforce or challenge existing perceptions of nature? 3) What insights do social media and Big Data informationgathering methods offer for visitor monitoring? I situated these research questions within the theoretical framework of the cultural construct of nature. To provide a longitudinal perspective on how our perception of nature is shaped by cultural and social influences, I explored the role of visual arts in wilderness discourses from the Romantic era to the present social media age. Next, I studied social media as a platform reflecting the tourist gaze: it is where the visitors share visual narratives, shaping the interpretation of landscapes and co-creating destination imagery. This characteristic of social media has allowed for several quantitative and qualitative visitor monitoring studies in the last years. The social media data, which was collected in 2019, consists of images that underwent analysis using both a computer vision programme for image analysis and manual categorisation techniques. Textual data was manually classified. I reflect on the consequent quantitative data with netnographic observations and ultimately use spatial analysis to overlay the social media data onto the geological, political, and environmental context of Kilpisjärvi. This study reveals that visitors’ social media posts from Kilpisjärvi often perpetuate colonialist and romanticised imagery of wilderness landscapes. Large open landscapes dominate the selected content, while images depicting individual elements of ecological nature or local everyday life and cultures are relatively few. Social media demonstrates a strong feeling of community, which strengthens, at unprecedented speed, the power of its impact on the tourist gaze, framing nature into sharable images. These results suggest that social media guides visitors to nature destinations primarily to admire landscapes, often overlooking ecological aspects. This tendency may foster a superficial relationship with nature. Furthermore, social media propagates a colonial discourse by marginalizing local and indigenous cultures, rendering them invisible within the landscapes depicted. This study contributes to the evolving research field by providing further evidence of the usability and limitations of social media data for visitor monitoring. Additionally, it advances qualitative interpretations of spatial and quantitative social media data through novel use of viewshed analysis to study visitor preferences. Finally, I have addressed the challenge for visitor management to balance the social media’s benefits in promoting destinations with its potential to shape the tourist gaze and limited representations of nature through shareable images.
... A razão principal é que as plataformas de mídia social oferecem uma rica fonte de 'rastros digita is' (Bruno, 2012), disponíveis de forma assíncrona e em tempo real. Esse potencial de rastreabilidade do SL colabora também com outros métodos digitais, como a netnogra fia (Reid;Duffy, 2018), tornando-se, portanto, de amplo uso em diversos contextos das ciências sociais. Ao analisar postagens, comentários e hashtags relacionados a assuntos específicos, os pesquisadores podem identificar temas principais, sentimentos e tendências no discurso público que extrapolam o interesse comercial. ...
... A razão principal é que as plataformas de mídia social oferecem uma rica fonte de 'rastros digita is' (Bruno, 2012), disponíveis de forma assíncrona e em tempo real. Esse potencial de rastreabilidade do SL colabora também com outros métodos digitais, como a netnogra fia (Reid;Duffy, 2018), tornando-se, portanto, de amplo uso em diversos contextos das ciências sociais. Ao analisar postagens, comentários e hashtags relacionados a assuntos específicos, os pesquisadores podem identificar temas principais, sentimentos e tendências no discurso público que extrapolam o interesse comercial. ...
A dengue teve picos de casos em 2024, causando uma epidemia significativa no Brasil. Este artigo utiliza a análise de big data para entender a percepção pública sobre a dengue em plataformas de mídia social. Baseado nos métodos digitais, o estudo adota o social listening para identificar padrões, sentimentos e discussões. Foca em seis tópicos: evolução das menções, distribuição por canal, gênero, engajamento, termos relacionados e sentimentos. Os resultados destacam tendências, canais mais ativos, e a influência política, oferecendo insights valiosos para formuladores de políticas e estrategistas de mídia social.
... The recently-developed analysis of the discussions on the Internet and social networks is an innovative health-information-gathering technique [23], providing unique insights into what citizens/patients actually know and think about diseases and treatments. The information and opinions shared on the Internet can be considered direct, genuine, and unprompted, offering access to patients' conversations and can influence patient behaviors [24][25][26][27]. Within Italy, the country that has been the target of the present study, Internet use showed an important growth in the last years. ...
... To achieve this goal, we selected the Web as the optimal source of information, since it represents an ecological space where people freely discuss, ask for information and get insights on health issues, as it has been clearly established. The qualitative and quantitative methods used in this study allowed us to understand health needs and concerns of patients, with the advantage of the absence of any bias due to external/observer interference [24][25][26][27]. ...
Background
Web discussions on health issues are becoming very relevant in the general public. In this context, little information is available regarding cardiovascular diseases, which remain the first cause of morbidity, disability and mortality worldwide. The central objective of the study was to conduct a Web listening analysis on discussions about cardiovascular diseases in Italy, comparing the data relative to the 2-year pre-COVID-19 pandemic period with those collected during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown (March-July 2020), with quantification of conversations on cardiovascular disease and Web-based discussions and specific evaluation of COVID-19 lockdown impact.
Methods
A retrospective Web listening analysis using publicly available data was conducted, using validated methods that allow to estimate cardiovascular disease awareness. Digital sources were identified to retrieve data (Italian language), relevant to cardiovascular disease topics. Data were analysed by Google Trends methodology and the Digital Intelligence Platform Brandwatch. Natural Language Processing algorithms enabled comparative analysis, topic detection, classification, leading to a 279,790-item dataset.
Results
News channels and Twitter were the most important platforms feeding cardiovascular disease information. Facebook was mostly relevant for information sharing. In the pre-COVID-19 period, cardiovascular disease ranked 5th among main health issues (vaccines, tumors, influenza, diabetes) on the Web, and the most discussed cardiovascular disease themes were symptoms/diagnosis (34%), treatments (20%), disease causes/triggers (11%), disease information (9%), quality of life (8%). Conversations on cardiovascular disease prevention were marginal (5%). The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown strongly impacted on discussed topics; novel themes emerged: hospitalization, death risk/occurrence, greater cardiovascular disease risk. Discussions on cardiovascular disease prevention remained marginal (4%). COVID-19 pandemic increased fear of severe COVID-19 among patients with cardiovascular disease and worsened quality of relationship/contact with physicians.
Conclusions
A limited awareness of cardiovascular disease and their prevention was observed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients/caregivers need more information and contact with physicians, as it emerged during COVID-19 pandemic. It is urgent to promote novel prevention strategies and to engage people leveraging digital channels and social media.
Graphical Abstract
... Table 1 summarizes the main contributions in the literature on brand management that guided the analysis in this chapter. As suggested by Reid and Duffy (2018), in netnography studies coding may be both inductive and deductive, particularly when, as it was the case of this study, research questions were formulated based on contributions in the literature. As such, and considering the scant literature particularly on the specificities of communication under a pandemic, the deductive coding based on the contributions in the literature was followed by an interpretivist approach, by immersing into the data and further understanding users' points of view and contexts of conversation, hence maximizing the netnographic understanding (Reid & Duffy, 2018). ...
... As suggested by Reid and Duffy (2018), in netnography studies coding may be both inductive and deductive, particularly when, as it was the case of this study, research questions were formulated based on contributions in the literature. As such, and considering the scant literature particularly on the specificities of communication under a pandemic, the deductive coding based on the contributions in the literature was followed by an interpretivist approach, by immersing into the data and further understanding users' points of view and contexts of conversation, hence maximizing the netnographic understanding (Reid & Duffy, 2018). • Attracts customers (Hartmann et al., 2005;Heinberg et al., 2017). ...
Although the literature on crisis communication is quite vast, business communication related to global crises (e.g., natural disasters) is largely unexplored. This chapter aims to fill this gap and shed light on brand communication strategies during a pandemic. A netnographic study was carried out with the purpose of identifying brand positioning and communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and of understanding the engagement of brands' followers during that period. The study included four brands of large Brazilian companies and comprised the analysis of brands' feed on Instagram during the first five weeks of the outbreak in Brazil. Findings enable to identify two distinct profiles: unprepared brands and leading brands. The chapter provides valuable clues for both managers and researchers dealing with crisis communication.
... As such, this research design fits with our research question, in which the behaviour of an online self-organised social group is central in our quest to understand how it facilitates SCRES during the pandemic. Our netnographic research is supported by WAG as a form of social listening technology that helps us gather data (see Reid and Duffy, 2018). Netnography provides rich and deep understanding, insights, and contextualisation of the data collected through the social listening technology (Reid and Duffy, 2018). ...
... Our netnographic research is supported by WAG as a form of social listening technology that helps us gather data (see Reid and Duffy, 2018). Netnography provides rich and deep understanding, insights, and contextualisation of the data collected through the social listening technology (Reid and Duffy, 2018). Kozinets (2010) argues that netnography is closely related to the case study methodology that relies on access as a basis for case selection (see Gammelgaard, 2017;Yin, 2014). ...
Purpose
This paper seeks to explore how a self-organised social group (SOSG) can facilitate supply chain resilience (SCRES) during an emergency condition.
Design/methodology/approach
A netnographic research was conducted on SONJO, an online SOSG emerging in response to problems in personal protective equipment (PPE) and food small businesses' supply chains (SCs) during the state of COVID-19 emergency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Qualitative data of 237,010 words were extracted from the group chats among 223 SONJO WhatsApp Group (WAG) members and were analysed using template analysis.
Findings
This paper reveals five communicative acts through which the SOSG facilitates SCRES, namely supply chain (SC) knowledge sharing, networking, bridging, mapping, and mindfulness. The enactment of these communicative acts could foster SC collaboration and help rebuild and sustain the SC operations during the critical period of the pandemic. The SOSG also facilitates the SC actors to be heedful of their responsive actions and risky operations.
Practical implications
This paper emphasises the need for organisations to build and maintain relationships with social communities and to extend their social capital beyond their existing SC linkages as an alternative way to survive unexpected disruptions.
Originality/value
This paper offers a novel perspective to understand SCRES from an external force. It proposes that, in the face of a devastating disruption, SCRES is not a self-induced process and that the SOSG could play a pivotal role in rebuilding the disrupted SCs. It also shows how a humanitarian effort could help rebuild commercial SCs.
... It is important to highlight that visual and textual analysis is starting to incorporate digital images on the SNS image-sharing platform Instagram as research data (Drenten et al., 2019) and through a netnographic process of hermeneutic analysis where reading and rereading, interpreting and reinterpreting what has already been reinterpreted leads to the construction of informa-tion that makes sense and is seen from the digital context as understandable and true. Netnography is closely aligned with the idea of investigating human experience so that social reality is seen as an iterative process in constant change (Reid & Duffy, 2018). ...
The analysis of brand management through images on social networks has become increasingly important for companies, and this is why the purpose of this article is to analyse how visual content strategies and interactions with consumers on Instagram contribute to the construction of the organizational identity of Colombian swimwear brands through the analysis of netnography, in order to improve the understanding of key attributes of digital marketing management. As a first step in collecting the data, the netnography method was used and then the data was analysed through content analysis. In general, it was observed that organizational identity can be born and raised in two ways, a more tangible one that includes factors that describe what the organization expresses and represents; and another made up of the essence, soul, and heart of the brand, both with equal importance when building the organizational identity in social networks based on images. Human Communications are being shaped by new technologies, so this research for practice could be of great use since SNS today are gaining more and more strength as a marketing and advertising tool within organizations.
... Instagram, a social media platform, is the primary focus of this paper because of its visual and symbolic features. Instagram's features enable consumers' symbolic interpretation of a brand's image, which has an impact on their engagement and purchase decisions (Chu et al., 2020;Reid & Duffy, 2018). Instagram's digital image capacities permit the construction of visually compelling user and brand representations (Huang & Ha, 2021;Rokka & Canniford, 2016) that engage consumers. ...
This study investigates the complex interplay of semiotics and symbolic interactionism in shaping customer
perceptions and buying behaviours on luxury fashion brands’ pages on Instagram. Existing research predominantly focuses on the quantitative aspects of social media influence, which leaves a research gap in understanding the qualitative nuances of these social interactions. This study addresses this gap by exploring how
consumers interpret and attribute meanings to luxury fashion brands’ symbols and signs, which are influenced by
their social and cultural contexts. A total of 718 reviews were garnered from the Instagram pages of 10 eminent
luxury fashion brands. Concurrently, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted with users engaged with luxury
fashion brands on Instagram, which focused on semiotics and purchasing tendencies within the Instagram milieu.
Grounded in symbolic interactionism theory and semiotic theory, the study identified six primary factors
influencing consumer behaviour on Instagram: aesthetic excitation, symbolic discourse, emblematic valuation,
digital resonance, semiotic faith, and semiotic compliance. Each factor represents specific ways consumers
interpret and respond to brand messages. The research revealed that consumers’ engagement with luxury fashion
brands on Instagram extends beyond mere visual appeal to involve a dynamic, symbiotic process of meaningmaking and interpretation. The study contributes novel insights into customer–brand interactions on Instagram and offers practical implications for fashion marketers. However, it is limited in its scope to Instagram and
luxury fashion brands, which suggests that future research could explore other social media platforms and
different brand categories.
... In turn, influencer content and discourse shape consumer culture (Dolbec and Fischer 2015). This work responds to two pressing calls in the literature: (1) understanding the role of emotions in aesthetic practices (Pomiès and Arsel 2018) and (2) mapping aesthetic experiences in digital spaces through a "netnographic sensibility" (Airoldi 2021;Reid and Duffy 2018). ...
How do influencers create content on social media that shapes consumer experiences and discourse around beauty standards? While research recognizes the power of influencers to help motivate market‐level changes, limited research has investigated this performance, particularly related to content intended to resist existing aesthetic norms. This research explores how social media spaces are designed and modified within the wider discourse by leveraging critical video analysis of TikTok influencers within the context of the body positivity movement. Using findings from netnographic data, we introduce a conceptual framework that explains how influencers and various market actors co‐create an affective aesthetic atmosphere—a space offering aesthetic meanings with the subjective formation of an experience and its related emotional bricolage, herein aimed at resisting normative beauty standards. Implications address the impact on consumer well‐being, the beauty industry, and marketers.
... The Russia Internet presented a methodological opportunity to explore disconnection in networks with a high level of political heterogeneity related to several factors including the political transformation of Russia toward increasingly authoritarian state and a war, where a significant number of users from both sides of the conflict speak the same language and use the same platforms. Relying on social media listening methodology (Reid & Duffy, 2018) the data collection focused on mentions with disconnectivity wording from Facebook public posts for the given period. The data collection relied on two phases: ...
This research examines the concept of "disconnective action" during crises, positing it as a necessary counterpart to "connective action" (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). While digital media is typically lauded for fostering connectivity during socio-political controversies, it also presents affordances for disconnectivity, such as unfriending, unfollowing, and banning. This project aims to understand the dynamics and implications of digital disconnection, particularly during crises that serve as catalysts for revealing divergent opinions among social network users (Sibona, 2014; John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; John & Gal, 2018). The theoretical backdrop of this study involves "disconnective power" (Light & Cassidy, 2014), which refers to the ability of dominant actors to employ digital media as tools for political, cultural, and social fragmentation. The research proposes that this form of power is particularly evident in the strategic use of digital technologies to isolate political systems and promote societal disintegration. Accordingly, the new forms of propaganda utilize disconnective affordances to undermine cross-conflict horizontal networks. By framing disconnection as a performative "speech act" (Austin,1962; Butler, 1990) and examining the role of social media as both a unifying and divisive force, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of digital interaction in times of socio-political unrest. Over five years, data on public unfriending announcements were collected, particularly from Russian-speaking Facebook users during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The research reveals the dominant logics behind publicized disconnective actions and the influence of individual users in initiating broader disconnective trends.
... Our research was inspired by online ethnographic approaches that are based on observation, such as ethnography (Belk et al., 2018). Nonetheless, we follow Belk et al. (2021)'s advice to use digital technologies in conjunction with netnography for data collection and analysis (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Our approach is grounded in observational ethnographic research, which has demonstrated the efficacy of video capturing in documenting and understanding customs and rituals (Figeac & Chaulet, 2018). ...
This study investigates the phenomenon of micro-moments and the behavior of making impulsive purchases among elderly women. This study aimed to identify the many micro-moments that cause impulsive purchase behavior. These micro-moments include boredom, social comparison, and a desire for self-reward. The study was conducted using the Digital Practice Tracing methodology with five women aged 50 and older. In addition, the study investigates the elements that influence older women's tendency to make impulsive purchases. These factors include individual characteristics, situational aspects, and marketing stimuli. According to the findings, older women are more likely to engage in impulsive purchasing in some circumstances, particularly when exposed to marketing stimuli that play on their desire for self-reward. In addition, the study underscores the necessity for marketers to recognize the specific features of older women as consumers and modify their marketing strategies according to such traits.
... This method explores online community exchanges such as information sharing, discussions, emotional support, and companionship. By examining these interactions, netnography provides valuable insights into the structure and patterns of relationships among community members, offering a comprehensive tool for understanding online social dynamics (Reid & Duffy, 2018). ...
The rapidly changing landscape of new media poses significant challenges for social scientists striving to define sociological and psychological contexts. The emergence of "Online flaming" as a behavior post-Web 2.0 technology exemplifies this challenge, as it represents a form of cyberbullying where users post hostile or insulting messages online, violating societal norms. This study integrates the stances and actions of celebrity brands on social media within their brand management processes. Employing netnography—an online ethnographic research method that systematically analyzes online communities—this study scrutinizes flaming behaviors impacting the personal brand management processes of actress Merve Dizdar on YouTube. The sample consists of the most-liked comments and
sub-comments from the top five YouTube channels featuring Dizdar's speech, categorized into six flame behavior types: direct and intentional flame, indirect flame, straight flame, satirical flame, hot flame, and cold flame. Through netnography, the study examines the cultural essence of cyberbullying embedded
within flaming behaviors. Findings of the research reveals the prevalent use of hostile language against the actress, with cyberbullies aiming to negatively impact her motivation. This research highlights the widespread use of exclusionary language, emphasizing its potential impact on the actress's online reputation and psychological well-being. Moreover, cyberbullies' aim to negatively affect the actress's motivation highlights the broader implications of online flaming on public figures. The study calls attention to brand management challenges in the digital age and offers insights into future research, aiming to foster a healthier online environment.
... We used ParseHub as a data scraping tool to collect Reddit posts from these communities, allowing us to gather a large amount of relevant data and then choose to analyze a smaller subset in detail. From a pool of 3000 extracts collected using the data scraping tool (Reid & Duffy, 2018), we have identified a subset of 141 posts containing the most pertinent comments. During the netnographic study, we extracted both textual and graphic data from the selected Reddit posts and interactions. ...
Proceedings of the 2024 NETNOCON Conference
... It takes effort to establish trust with interviewees and to make them feel more willing to disclose details and personal experiences about the investigated phenomenon (Arsel, 2017;Seregina & Weijo, 2017). Moreover, the aforementioned interviews were conducted online, using information and communication technologies (ICT) to get closer to the eSports environment and minimize physical limitations (Dean, 2019;Reid & Duffy, 2018). For ethical reasons, the current study followed the suggestion by Lo Iacono et al. (2016) about asking for interviewees' permission to record, store, transcribe, and use the collected information for research purposes. ...
Purpose
Women’s increasing interest in eSports is an emblematic phenomenon. However, they have been facing discriminatory sexist practices based on a discourse focused on establishing gender inferiority. Thus, the present research aims to investigate how gender performativities are produced in eSports consumption by women gamers.
Originality/value
Due to a lack of discussions about female eSports consumption, the current study explores gaps in consumer culture research literature based on theoretical and epistemological concerns. Butlerian concepts of performativity are used to help better understand the conduct produced in discussions about female eSports consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
An interpretive content analysis (ICA) of 44 interviews was carried out to help better understand women gamers’ perception of their experience in games, and in the cultural scenario itself, the eSports consumers’ social network is formed by both practitioners and game enthusiasts.
Findings
The current analytical effort identified two dimensions: “Fight like a girl!” and “Girls just want to have fun!”. It was possible to perceive that even gender performativities with different interests work as gender discourse reproducers and spreaders in both dimensions when they take place without due diligence. Ultimately, this is a complex market dispositif capable of leading the eSports scenario to a patriarchal system among its consumers.
Keywords:
women gamers; eSports; gender performativity; marketplace dispositif; interpretive content analysis
... Using linguistic analysis of the corpus of text messages for various companies and sectors of the economy, the most common words were identified, thematic modeling was carried out, and the dynamics of news reports and their relationship with external factors were studied. and initiatives [15][16][17][18][19]. Tollinen et al. [20] investigated the use of social media monitoring to assess consumer attitudes towards companies operating on the B2B principle. ...
In the modern economy, the success of a business is largely determined by the company’s ability to analyze consumer preferences, consumer attitudes towards the company’s products, as well as the ability to quickly respond to changing preferences or negative trends. Social listening is a technology for analyzing conversations, text messages and any kind of mention of a company, its products or brand. Currently, it is most effective to carry out social listening by monitoring social networks (VKontakte, etc.), which are the largest sources of text messages from millions of users. The purpose of this work is to analyze the practices of using social listening technology, as well as common approaches to the use of social networks by domestic and foreign companies. Based on the specialized software developed by the authors, an analysis of more than 50 000 news reports published in 2021–2024 was carried out on companies of different levels and specialization. Using linguistic analysis of the corpus of text messages for various companies and sectors of the economy, the most common words were identified, thematic modeling was carried out, and the dynamics of news reports and their relationship with external factors were studied.
... Social listening enables the identification of emerging trends, user needs, and priorities, while keeping communicators informed of crises, misinformation, public sentiment, as well as cultural and demographic factors that may influence risk perception (Stieglitz et al., 2018). Additionally, it enables the assessment of adherence to prevention measures and prompt implementation of data-supported interventions in real-time (Merchant & Lurie, 2020;Reid & Duffy, 2018). Projects such as the Red Crescent COVID-19 dashboards and WHO Early Artificial Intelligence-Supported Response with social listening have been employed to monitor and manage infodemics (IFRC, 2023;WHO, 2023). ...
This study analyzed 1,683,700 vaccine-related tweets in Finnish using FinBERT language model, Botometer, and BERTopic, from December 2019 to October 2022. A strong correlation was identified between Negative Stance towards Vaccines (NSV) and misinformation, with an upward trend over time and a significant role of malicious bot accounts. Topic modeling revealed persistent themes of vaccine skepticism and diverse misinformation themes adapting to debunking efforts. Approximately a third of tweets contained misinformation, irrespective of source reliability, leading to increased NSV. The study observed a gap in active countering of misinformation by authorities, suggesting proactive involvement by public authorities, public education for effective misinformation management and social media literacy.
... That is, while the ethnographer researcher has to live to understand the cultural context in which human actions take place where they research (Boellstorff et al., 2012), and empathize with it, the netnographer just watches and follows from the outside. In that way, the approach involves adapting traditional offline research techniques (like interviews, observation, etc.) for use in a digital environment (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Therefore, this changing contextuality has led to a differentiated set of philosophical, logical, and methodological tools, methods, and assumptions (see Table 1). ...
Netnography is a research method that has emerged in the last three decades and has been widely used and recently expanded into different disciplines. After its emergence in the field of marketing, it has been preferred to be used more with the advancement of technology-human interaction. Netnography, which has an ethnography-based starting point, follows the traces of the culture that people build in the online world. The fact that the culture shared in the online environment is very common and simultaneous with the developing social media applications are the advantages that bring Netnography to the fore. This article, however, covers a short history of netnography over time, where it differs from ethnography on philosophical and methodological grounds, how netnography can be applied, and how it has been used and would be used in some fields of business studies
... Thus, the focus is on understanding the phenomenon rather than identifying its causes or consequences. The study utilises a netnographic approach combined with data gathering through social media monitoring tools, referred to as netnographic sensibility (Reid & Duffy, 2018). ...
Positioned at the interface between production and consumption, grocery retailers play a pivotal role in shaping the future of food waste. In addition to generating food waste in their everyday business operations, retailers’ actions also have an indirect impact on other actors, especially consumers. Utilising the issue arena as a theoretical lens, this chapter scrutinises the public discussion on food waste and how it may steer understandings and changes connected to the issue. Holding considerable power within both the food system and society, grocery retailers’ voices in the issue arena may have a significant impact. The purpose of the chapter is to examine how grocery retailers construct the food waste issue through discussing it on social media. Drawing on data gathered from social media, three discussion approaches to the issue are identified and discussed: reporting on reducing food waste, assisting households in reducing food waste, and initiating discussion for reducing food waste. The study also identifies themes that remain unmentioned by retailers despite being highly relevant from the food waste perspective. In order to have a stronger impact on the future of food waste, retailers are encouraged to adopt a more transformational role, both in their public communications and in their everyday actions.
... lived experience of online life(Reid & Duffy, 2018). The pilot studyinvolved the covert observation of the online brand community for Chevy Bolt (ChevyBolt.org) ...
Online brand communities can serve as a crucial information source about a product-harm crisis and allow consumers to seek information from others and share their opinions in a social dynamic environment. The role of an online brand community in shaping consumer responses following such a crisis nevertheless remains under-researched. Drawing from attribution theory, this research explores the dynamic and holistic consumer journey in online brand communities following a product-harm crisis , specifically examining consumer attribution as the key mechanism and con-sumers' decision to forgive the brand as the outcome response. This research includes two studies. First, a netnographic pilot study is conducted to provide real-world evidence for the research phenomenon and to explore consumer responses within the natural setting of an online brand community. Second, the main study uses an interpretivist epistemological approach to track the unfolding process and capture the evolution of consumer attribution and forgiveness. The results show the social nature of attribution as members engage with others in online brand communities, seeking and verifying information, sensemaking and forming opinions. The findings make theoretical contributions to the literature on attribution and product-harm crisis. The findings from the research also help brands make informed decisions on crisis management strategies.
... Moreover, social listening tools, powered by AI, allow advocacy groups to gauge public sentiment, track discourse trends, and refine their communication strategies. Real-time feedback loops ensure that advocacy remains relevant, resonant, and impactful (Ballestar et al., 2020;Nasser Al Harbi, 2020;Reid and Duffy, 2018). ...
In an era marked by the escalating implications of climate change, the importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) cannot be overemphasised. This paper elucidates the multifaceted roles of ICT in both the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. On the mitigation front, ICT offers tools for monitoring and modelling greenhouse gas emissions, optimising energy consumption, and facilitating the transition to renewable energy sources. In terms of adaptation, ICT enhances the prediction and management of climate-induced risks, supports real-time communication during extreme weather events, and aids in the planning and implementation of resilient infrastructure. Moreover, ICT bolsters the communication of climate science to diverse audiences, fostering education and advocacy. However, while the potential of ICT is significant, challenges such as e-waste, energy consumption of data centres, and digital divides necessitate holistic strategies to maximise ICT's positive impact. This paper underscores the need for informed policy-making, integration with traditional ecological knowledge, and interdisciplinary collaboration to leverage ICT effectively in the global climate response.
... A new trend covering both qualitative and quantitative analyses can add to the methodology. There is huge scope to include social listening/netnographic techniques (Reid and Duffy 2018), and newer methods such as natural language processing, text analytics, and sentiment analysis. Furthermore, the study offers avenues for future research in method section, such as, the present study would be useful for academic researchers as they can relate the evolution of research about addition in topics, context, antecedents, consequences, related factors, and measurement. ...
The paper conducts a comprehensive review based on the topic of experience in financial services. The paper presents the evolution and structure on the topic. A bibliometric analysis of literature is performed around the key components using Bibliometrix of R package and VOSviewer. The analysis is based on 137 articles, which are published in 73 leading journals between the years 1985 to 2021. Using the dimensions database, research articles on experience in financial services are extracted and analysed to uncover this topic’s intellectual development and key themes through a mixed-methods approach of quantitative bibliometric and qualitative content analyses. More specifically, descriptive statistics, Lotka’s law, co-occurrence networks, thematic maps, and bibliometric coupling are used for the analysis. The bibliometric analysis facilitates technical examination and visualization of the scholarly financial service experience research. Based on grounded theory, content analysis is successively conducted to establish theoretical building blocks of financial service experience, providing a conceptual model of this concept. Using bibliometric coupling, nine significant clusters are identified: experience and related constructs, experience in the digital and social media era, experience and quality, experience and customer journey, brand and digital financial services experience, experience and financial institutions, experience and employees, experience and financial literacy, and customer experience management. The study employs more updated and relevant analysis techniques and provides a critical review of the topic. The bibliometric analysis enabled scientific investigation and visualization of the scholarly financial services experience literature providing a holistic understanding of the concept, illustrated topic’s scholarly evolution, and revealed key directions for future research.
... The behaviour of SNS users, particularly on Twitter, comprises multiple roles with several streams of interaction. As an exploratory research approach, it allows the researchers to scan the actions of individuals, understand their voices, and assimilate their collective online interactions (Kozinets, 2013;Reid and Duffy, 2018). ...
... The behaviour of SNS users, particularly on Twitter, comprises multiple roles with several streams of interaction. As an exploratory research approach, it allows the researchers to scan the actions of individuals, understand their voices, and assimilate their collective online interactions (Kozinets, 2013;Reid and Duffy, 2018). ...
... Applications of social listening in public health and well-being contexts include studies of patients' reactions to knee replacement surgery (Pitt, Mulvey, and Kietzmann, 2018), gamblers' reflections on problem gambling (Brown, Caruna, Mulvey, and Pitt, 2021), expressions of stigma against people with dementia (Bacsu et al., 2022), public attitudes towards vaccines (Fazel et al., 2021), job satisfaction and turnover (Lam, Mulvey, and Robson, 2022), and retirement travel planning (Mulvey, Padgett, and Lever, 2022), using diverse online data sources including discussion forums, review platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. In addition, social media methods are well-suited to collecting and analyzing data rapidly in times of crisis or responding to emerging trends, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Picone et al., 2020;Reid and Duffy, 2018). Furthermore, advice sharing on social networks is inherently social-people exchange ideas, solicit and deliver advice, and develop relationships with other community members (Kozinets, 2002;Mulvey, Padgett, and Lever, 2022). ...
Background: This article investigates how people invoked the concept of dignity on Twitter during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a secondary focus on mentions of dignity in the context of older adults and ageing. Methods: We report the results of a study that combines text analytic and interpretive methods to analyze word clusters and dignity-based themes in a cross-national sample of 1,946 original messages posted in 2020. Results: The study finds that dignity discourse on Twitter advances five major themes: (a) recognize dignity as a fundamental right, (b) uphold the dignity of essential workers, (c) preserve the dignity of at-risk populations, (d) prevent cascading disasters that exacerbate dignity's decline, and (e) attend to death, dignity, and the sanctity of life. Conclusions: Moreover, messages focusing on older adults lamented the disproportionate death toll, the terrible circumstances in long-term care homes, the added impact of suspended meal delivery services and the status of older people living below the poverty line.
Link to open source full-text: 10.12688/f1000research.129829.1
... In addition, as a qualitative research method under the developing branch of traditional ethnography, netnography places more emphasis on the "immersive" rather than "invasive" nature of research (Kozinets, 2015;Reid and Duffy, 2018). Netnography has been applied in many contexts, such as wine tourism experience (Kozinets, 2002;Vo Thanh and Kirova, 2018), brand communities (Weijo et al., 2014) and branding (Loureiro et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
Global product-harm crises increased in recent years. After such crises, firms' product-recall policies varied across countries, which might cause consumers in some countries to feel unfairly treated. Drawing on the relative deprivation theory, this study aims to examine how perceived unfairness of local consumers alters their attitudes toward unfairness-enacting foreign brands and competing domestic brands.
Design/methodology/approach
This framework was tested by a netnography study on two product recalls from Samsung along with a consumer survey. While this netnography study provided preliminary support to the framework, survey data collected from 501 Samsung consumers after the Galaxy Note 7 crisis validated the theoretical model again.
Findings
Perceived unfairness increases local consumers' avoidance of involved foreign brands and their intention to purchase domestic brands through evoking anger toward the foreign brands. Moreover, the detrimental impact of perceived unfairness is found to be stronger when consumers' prior relationship quality is high.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates unfair product recalls across countries and aims to provide important insights into how consumers react to the unfair treatment of foreign brands in a global product-harm context. This study contributes to the product-harm crisis literature and provides important implications for global product-harm crisis management strategies.
... 1. Social marketing (SMK) refers to a series of transaction-oriented business activities in SM that aim to improve advertising visibility, facilitate promotions for customers, and make customer purchases happen (Chang et al., 2018;Valos et al., 2019;Wang and Kim, 2017). Specifically, these practices involve advertising, promotions, and brand awareness improvements via SM channels (Reid and Duffy, 2018). Typically, organizations adopting SMK intend to make SM practical selling tools with firm-initiated interaction. ...
Business organizations are surging to integrate social media with their business and operations management, as it is broadly recognized that social media usage (SMU) could bring them superior performance advantages, especially in the digital era. However, prior studies investigating the effects of SMU on organizational performance provide scattered, mixed, and even conflicting results from diverse disciplines. This study aims to map the comprehensive relationship between SMU and organizational performance by adopting meta-analysis and examining potential factors that moderate such relationships. Based on the sample size of 24,576 organizations accumulated from 65 empirical studies, this study attempts to dissect SMU into manifold practices containing social marketing, social listening & monitoring, social communication, and social networking & collaboration. Meanwhile, these SMUs have varying relationships not only with financial performance but also with innovation, social and operational performance. Further analysis results also confirm that theoretical lens, social media platforms, and industry-level factors (i.e., firm size, industry type, economic market) significantly moderate the strength of SMU-Performance relationships. These findings provide theoretical contributions, managerial implications , and future research directions on the integrated SMU-Performance relationship.
... Ethical considerations in the online landscape have been investigated largely in the context of online ethics (Hair & Clark, 2007;Nunan & Di Domenico, 2013;Nunan & Yenicioglu, 2013;Reid & Duffy, 2018;Zimmer, 2010), ethnography in virtual worlds (Boellstorff, 2012;Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, & Taylor, 2012) and netnography related ethical issues (Kozinets, 2002(Kozinets, , 2012(Kozinets, , 2015(Kozinets, , 2020. Others have focused on more specific areas of online ethics such as ethical considerations for vulnerable consumers (Thompson et al., 2021). ...
Ethical considerations are increasingly important because new online techniques of research such as online ethnography often have novel ethical challenges. Our research aims to help online ethnographers by providing a moral/philosophical framework to be used in making ethical decisions and guiding them to reflect on how these decisions affect and justify their methodological choices. We draw upon prior research on ethics and online ethnography, and utilize five key dimensions of moral and philosophical principles (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, justice and trust, explicability) for our framework. Our research highlights essential ethical questions such as selecting a philosophical basis as your ethical frame and coming to terms with ambiguity, and related methodological guidelines such as avoiding personal prejudice, assumptions and bias, research site entry strategy, researcher’s communication with the participants, protection of data, research site exit strategy and communicating online research findings. This paper contributes to the existing literature by identifying how moral and philosophical guidelines impact our ethical and methodological choices when engaging in online ethnography and what this means in terms of research practice.
... We used a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2015) to understand how entrepreneurial selves and beneficiary others were portrayed on the ToH website. The approach helped us develop a 'netnographic sensibility', or 'social listening', linked to previous experiences and representations of social entrepreneurs, developing a more holistic understanding (Reid & Duffy, 2018). Our focus in the netnography was on distant others, markedly different from selves, and 'remaining in their place', with the purpose of capturing typical representations of selves and others. ...
The social entrepreneurship (SE) discourse habitually casts social entrepreneurs as heroic, creating economic and social value, whereas those whom they strive to assist are portrayed as disadvantaged and in need of interventions. This implies an implicit differentiation between knowing, agentic entrepreneurs and less-knowing, more passive beneficiaries. In this article, we seek to unfold the subtle ordering of relations in SE and problematize power-related aspects and ideological influences that potentially overshadow dimensions of mutuality and relationality inherent to SE. From an examination of two cases, we hypothesize that differentiations between knowing selves and learning others tend to disintegrate when entrepreneurs and beneficiaries enter into closer interaction. Adopting a postcolonial framework, we identify three forms of relations in SE: transactional, ambiguous/interactional and transcending.
This study explores the evolving needs of Generation Z (Gen Z) and Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) users in the context of libraries, emphasizing the critical role of social listening as a tool for engagement. Social listening, a technique used by professionals to track online conversations and mentions about brands, products, and services, offers valuable insights into user preferences and behaviors. With Gen Z being the first to grow up with seamless access to the internet and Gen Alpha following closely, both generations exhibit distinct characteristics that challenge traditional methods of user engagement. These users prioritize digital interaction over physical spaces, reshaping how libraries function and the relevance of conventional services. Libraries are facing existential threats as they struggle to adapt to this generational shift, with traditional physical collections and spaces giving way to digital environments. This article aims to review existing literature on generational cohort, proposing a conceptual framework that integrates social listening into library management strategies. The framework will help library professionals better engage with these tech-savvy users, ensuring libraries’ survival and continued relevance in a rapidly digitizing world.
The rapidly changing landscape of new media poses significant challenges for social scientists striving to define sociological and psychological contexts. The emergence of "Online flaming" as a behavior post-Web 2.0 technology exemplifies this challenge, embodying a form of cyberbullying characterized by insulting messages online, which transgress societal norms. This study integrates the stances and actions of celebrity brands on social media within their brand management processes. Employing netnography—an online ethnographic research method that systematically analyzes online communities—this study scrutinizes flaming behaviors impacting the personal brand management processes of actress Merve Dizdar on YouTube. The sample consists of the most-liked comments and sub-comments from the top five YouTube channels featuring Dizdar's speech, categorized into six flame behavior types: direct and intentional flame, indirect flame, straight flame, satirical flame, hot flame, and cold flame. Through netnography, the study examines the cultural essence of cyberbullying embedded within flaming behaviors. Findings of the research reveals the prevalent use of exclusionary language against the actress, with cyberbullies aiming to negatively impact her motivation. This research highlights the widespread use of exclusionary language, emphasizing its potential impact on the actress's online reputation and psychological well-being. Moreover, cyberbullies' aim to negatively affect the actress's motivation highlights the broader implications of online flaming on public figures. The study calls attention to brand management challenges in the digital age and offers insights for future research, aiming to foster a healthier online environment.
Background This article investigates how people invoked the concept of dignity on Twitter (X) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a secondary focus on mentions of dignity in the context of older adults and ageing. Methods We report the results of a study that combines text analytic and interpretive approaches to analyze word clusters and dignity-based themes in a cross-national sample of 1,946 original Twitter (X) messages posted in 2020. Results The study finds that dignity discourse on Twitter advances five major themes: (a) recognizing dignity as a fundamental right, (b) upholding the dignity of essential workers, (c) preserving the dignity of at-risk populations, (d) preventing cascading disasters that exacerbate dignity’s decline, and (e) attending to death, dignity, and the sanctity of life. Conclusions Within the discourse, dignity emerged as a right and a policy target (improving or maximizing dignity in various groups). Further, the posts focusing on older adults and dignity demonstrated that the impacts of COVID-19 disproportionately impacted older adults, particularly those with greater care needs and financial insecurity or lower socioeconomic status.
In this article, I introduce a novel epistemological approach meant to re-adapt the digital methods paradigm to a fast changing digital landscape. This change was mostly brought about by the transformation of Web 2.0 into a platformized social media environment and the advent of the post-API and platform surveillance era. This approach is premised on the idea of considering the Internet user as a source of methods, rather than an object of study. To this purpose I suggest to ‘ follow the user’, meaning to take advantage of the natively digital methods that Internet users employ to gather, organise, manage and create their own digital data throughout their everyday digital practices. In order to illustrate my approach, I show how to practically follow the users in each of the key phases of a digital research project within social media platforms: keywords selection, data collection, data sampling, data analysis. In doing so, I mean to contribute to an emerging strand of research within the digital methods tradition which is trying to: (a) update digital methods, given the continuous mutations of the digital landscape; (b) seek a more organic and systematic integration of digital and qualitative methods; (c) go beyond the classical quali-quanti dichotomy.
Purpose
This paper aims to study antiques enthusiasts’ perspectives on the recent stagnancy in the antiques market, along with their suggestions on how the antiques trade can forge a more secure path forward.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative analysis approach through netnography, this paper examines archived comments of antiques enthusiasts on a “r/antiques” subreddit.
Findings
This research studies connoisseurs’ insights into the reduction in antiques sales experienced by a wide cross-section of sellers, particularly independent and small business retailers. Specifically, the results of this paper’s discourse analysis show that technological advances on one hand and socioeconomic factors (e.g. income, family structure and lifestyle) on the other hand have had a significant negative impact on demand for antiques. In addition, specific attributes such as authenticity and sustainability emerged as potential key marketing elements for invigorating the broader public’s interest in purchasing antiques.
Originality/value
Despite their significant insights into the antiques market, antiques enthusiasts have not received the academic attention they deserve. Through discourse analysis of comments in an online antiques community, this paper draws attention to the vulnerabilities of antiques markets to a protracted climate of slow sales, while highlighting potential strategies on how to turn the tide for struggling antiques stores.
This paper systematically analyses the research on enterprise knowledge management and digital technology. We used VOSviewer to carry out topic cluster analysis and found that current research can be divided into four topics: digital technology and customer knowledge management; application dilemma and problems of digital technology in knowledge management; digital transformation of organizational knowledge management; and the influence of digital technology on knowledge management. In addition, we summarize the application research framework of digital technology in enterprise knowledge management, including antecedents, results and impact paths.
Digital platforms are spaces for social participation with significant value in the development of the identity of adolescents and emerging adults. The objective is to identify the behavior and visibility of LGBT content using Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter posts of such content from May 16 to November 16, 2022, collecting 539,389 posts. Social media monitoring techniques gathered the posts with the keywords “LGTB” or “LGBT” in Spanish and English, forming the database. The methodology is based on a mixed design: first, the database is analyzed using Big Data techniques and, second, the 10 most viral posts from each social network are selected. The results show that dissemination of gender identity in content and meaning is uneven across the various social networks. Twitter profiles have a higher number of posts (61%), polarization, and lower virality and exhibit visible LGBTphobia. Instagram has a number of posts (37%) and average virality, with positive sentiments. TikTok has fewer posts (2%), less polarization, positive messages, and extreme virality. The three networks consider the Pride demonstrations to be a symbol of the community because they destabilize and confront LGBTphobic oppression by occupying public spaces, opening the closet without stigma or shame, as is reflected on social networks. The behavior of LGBT content on these platforms is multidimensional, uneven, and differentiated, which demonstrates the necessity of ensuring respect for the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity on digital platforms.
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.
This article explored how players were impacted by and used emergent narrative to make sense of their gameplay in the Total War strategy video game series. Two stages of qualitative research were undertaken: (i) a thematic analysis of 295 online forum posts; and (ii) 104 respondents to an online survey. The research followed a phenomenographic approach with analysis informed by undertaking the active story interpreter role. The thematic analysis found that 32 % of the posts contained emergent narratives of which 14 % were detailed, while a further 39 % of the posts expressed pleasure from reading these emergent narratives. Results from online survey suggested respondents developed emotional attachments to the generals and units they controlled in Total War video game, and that this emotional attachment increased their enjoyment of the gameplay (79 %). However, sometimes, due to these attachments, players allowed generals to ‘retire’ and idle in a settlement, which may have adversely impacted their strategic gameplay in a game genre that privileges long-term planning. Since players can derive pleasure in creating or reading other players’ emergent narratives, developers could further enhance players’ enjoyment of their strategy games by providing more resources and prompts to assist with their creation.
The aim of this article is to offer a methodological framework for a systematic capture and analysis of consumer lurking practices in digital environments. Despite the prevalence of lurking, it is still an understudied topic in marketing and consumer research due to methodological constraints. To remedy this, we introduce Digital Practices Tracing (DPT), a novel methodological framework integrating digital methods and post-phenomenological inquiry. This combination allows capturing naturally occuring digital lurking practices and uncovering their underlying motivations. The article’s contribution is threefold. First, it provides a detailed research protocol that can be easily applied and further scaled. Second, it applies the methodology to make invisible lurking practices on social media visible. Third, it introduces an ad hoc taxonomy of digital lurking practices useful to trace and measure them.
Like the first component of a research report (introduction to the research), the last component (research summary, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations) is an important component in business and public administration research as is the case in any humanities and social science research. In sum, the ‘introduction to the research’ component focuses on conceptualising the research, that is, ‘what’ research we are pursuing and ‘why’. The ‘research summary, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations’ focuses on four related aspects of a research report. First, it provides for the outputs of research by summarising its process and content. Second, it provides for the outcomes of research by pointing out its conclusions. Third, it documents aspects that took away (limitations) from the research process and its resulting content. Lastly, based on the foregoing, it proposes some policy, operational, practical, and future research recommendations. However, when undertaking this ultimate component, we often fail to explicitly tie in all that happened (research process) and how this led to the content. Therefore, this paper pursues the question, ‘how can we effectively summarise a business and public administration research report and critically point out its conclusions as well as limitations and recommendations’. In doing so, we propose some approaches and considerations when wrapping up our business and public administration research. Generally, we should realise that this component feeds off and links in with the other five components of a research report, implying that its quality is only as good as the quality of the other components. Further, since this component also feeds into the other components of a research report, we can use it to improve our research report especially the first component (research conceptualisation) and the second (the conceptual framework). Specifically, the four subcomponents namely, research summary, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations, are interlinked and, therefore, we should have this in mind when dealing with this component. Like any other component, it should be well structured, well written, and its content comprehensive and critical. We should remember that it is a platform for us to stand out from anyone else doing similar research. We believe that the approach proposed in this paper provides a firm starting point for wrapping up our business and public administration research.
The amount of digital text available for analysis by consumer researchers has risen dramatically. Consumer discussions on the internet, product reviews, and digital archives of news articles and press releases are just a few potential sources for insights about consumer attitudes, interaction, and culture. Drawing from linguistic theory and methods, this article presents an overview of automated text analysis, providing integration of linguistic theory with constructs commonly used in consumer research, guidance for choosing amongst methods, and advice for resolving sampling and statistical issues unique to text analysis. We argue that although automated text analysis cannot be used to study all phenomena, it is a useful tool for examining patterns in text that neither researchers nor consumers can detect unaided. Text analysis can be used to examine psychological and sociological constructs in consumerproduced digital text by enabling discovery or by providing ecological validity. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Netnography is a specific approach to conducting ethnography on the internet. It is a qualitative, interpretive research methodology that adapts traditional ethnographic techniques to the study of social media. As discussed in this entry, Netnography adds specific practices that include locating communities and topics, narrowing data, handling large digital datasets, analyzing digitally contextualized data, and navigating difficult online ethical matters and research procedures. The nature of researcher immersion and ethnographic (or “netnographic”) participation is also treated rigorously within netnography. The new approach has gained wide acceptance within business research and is spreading to other fields.
n the past two decades, participation in online conversations has grown from a relatively marginal activity of hackers, geeks, and early cyberculture members to a mainstream activity recognized and supported by mainstream businesses and media. Starting from tiny numbers of enthusiasts, over a billion people now use social media to communicate, create, and share information, opinions, and insights. Online social spaces have become increasingly recognized as important fields for qualitative social scientific investigation because of the richness and openness of its multifarious cultural sites. At the same time, online data present unique challenges for researchers, as it is voluminous , optionally anonymous, and often difficult to categorize. This chapter introduces readers to netnography, a technique for the cultural analysis of social media and online community data. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the distinctive cultural features of online, or social media, qualitative data and to overview, develop, and illustrate techniques for their rigorous analysis as they have been developed through the research approach of netnography.
The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the “classical” online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self...
This is the first article to describe how broadening of the term netnography in qualitative research is leading to misperceptions and missed opportunities. The once accepted need for human presence in netnographic studies is giving way to nonparticipatory (passive) approaches, which claim to be naturalistic and bias-free. While this may be tenable in some environments, it also removes the opportunity for cocreation in online communities and social media spaces. By contrast, participatory (active) netnographers have an opportunity to conduct their research in a way that contributes value and a continuity of narrative to online spaces. This article examines the ways in which netnographies are being used and adapted across a spectrum of online involvement. It explores the ways in which netnographies conform to, or depart from, the unique set of analytic steps intended to provide qualitative rigor. It concludes by advocating for active netnography, one which requires a netnographic “slog” where researchers are prepared for the “blood, sweat, and tears” in order to reap rich benefits.
During the 2014 EPIC Conference, Allen Batteau and Robert J. Morais led a workshop entitled, “Toward Conceptual, Methodological, and Ethical Standards of Practice in Business Anthropology.” This article summarizes the objectives and results of the workshop.
Communal consumption is often described as inherently playful, with previous research mainly focusing on successful ludic communal experiences, and largely disregarding its potential pitfalls. Moreover, the marketer is usually seen as the primary facilitator of ludic experiences, which has marginalized the role of the consumer. This article explores how consumers produce and sustain ludic consumption community experiences in the face of growing instrumental costs. It assumes a practice theory lens, and is based on an ethnographic inquiry into cosplay, which is a time and resource intensive form of pop culture masquerade and craft consumption. Prolonged engagement in the cosplay community leads to growing emotional, material, temporal, and competence-related costs, which hinder playful experiences. Consumers practice modularization, reinforcement, and collaboration to overcome these costs and maintain the important ludic sensations that motivate communal engagements.
The aim of this study was to present the functionality and design of nursing care robots as depicted in pictures posted on social media. A netnographic study was conducted using social media postings over a period of 3 years. One hundred and Seventy-two images were analyzed using netnographic methodology. The findings show that nursing care robots exist in various designs and functionalities, all with a common denominator of supporting the care of one's own and others' health and/or well-being as a main function. The results also show that functionality and design are influenced by recent popular sci-fi/cartoon contexts as portrayed in blockbuster movies, for example. Robots'designs seem more influenced by popular sci-fi/cartoon culture than professional nursing culture. We therefore stress that it is relevant for nursing researchers to critically reflect upon the development of nursing care robots as a thoughtful discussion about embracing technology also might generate a range of epistemological possibilities when entering a postmodern era of science and practice.
Background Online communities are new sites for undertaking research, with their textual interactions providing a rich source of data in real time. 'Ethnonetnography' is a research methodology based on ethnography that can be used in these online communities. In this study, the researcher and a specialist breast care nurse (SBCN) were immersed in the online community, adding to patients' breast cancer care and providing a nursing research component to the community. Aim To examine Kozinets' (2010) framework for ethnonetnography and how it may be varied for use in a purpose-built, disease-specific, online support community. Discussion The online community provided an area where members could communicate with each other. Kozinets' (2010) framework was varied in that the research was carried out in a purpose-built community opf which an SBCN was a member who could provide support and advice. The application of the ethnonetnographic methodology has wide implications for clinical nursing practice and research. Conclusion Ethnonetnography can be used to study disease-specific communities in a focused manner and can provide immediate benefits through the inclusion of an expert nurse and contemporaneous application of research findings to patient care. Implications for practice With ethical permission and the permission of online community members, nurse researchers can enter already established online communities. Ethnonetnography is ideally suited to nursing research as it provides the immediacy of evidence-based interaction with an expert nurse. These real-time responses improve support for those experiencing a critical life event.
Both videography and netnography contain relatively new practices for collecting and analyzing data that can be used for formative research in social marketing. The combination of the Internet and video also offers new presentation opportunities for research that can potentially reach a broad audience of academics, managers, NGOs, government officials, and ordinary consumers. In the treatment that follows we suggest some common elements between the two methods before first addressing videographic methods and providing a case study of its use for social marketing purposes. We follow with a summary of netnographic methods. To close, we discuss opportunities as well as issues in using both techniques in formative research for social marketing.
This chapter takes an open look at how researchers are using new topographies, technologies, and technocultural rituals and routines in order to reconceptualize what market actors are and do, and most especially, how they should be studied. We are interested in the latest developments in consumer ethnography, as we have experienced and visualized them being practices in our native fields of anthropology, marketing and consumer research, and as it has touched upon industry market researchers and their workings.
Netnography is an approach to studying online communities and cultures to arrive at an ethnographic understanding. Drawing on our own experiences and methodological choices in a netnography of a multi-site online community of practice of English language teachers, known as Webheads in Action, this article illustrates how ethnographic fieldwork practices change when carried out with communities that exist primarily online. Focusing on illustrative examples from our 10-month netnographic fieldwork data, we argue that concepts of ‘the field, participant observation, interviews, and researcher survival skills’ are experienced in fundamentally different ways in netnography as opposed to in-person ethnography, which calls for reconceptualisation of fieldwork practices in online communities because of the dynamics of online environments and the use of web-based technologies.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to assess how the study of consumer behavior can benefit from the presence of Big Data.
Design/methodology/approach
– This paper offers a conceptual overview of potential opportunities and changes to the study of consumer behavior that Big Data will likely bring.
Findings
– Big Data have the potential to further our understanding of each stage in the consumer decision-making process. While the field has traditionally moved forward using a priori theory followed by experimentation, it now seems that the nature of the feedback loop between theory and results may shift under the weight of Big Data.
Research limitations/implications
– A new data culture is now represented in marketing practice. The new group advocates inductive data mining and A/B testing rather than human intuition harnessed for deduction. The group brings with it interest in numerous secondary data sources. However, Big Data may be limited by poor quality, unrepresentativeness and volatility, among other problems.
Practical implications
– Managers who need to understand consumer behavior will need a workforce with different skill sets than in the past, such as Big Data consumer analytics.
Originality/value
– To the authors ' knowledge, this is one of the first articles to assess how the study of consumer behavior can evolve in the context of the Big Data revolution.
This paper builds upon a core metaphor of scientific methodological diffusion as a specialized form of the marketing of ideas. Using as an illustrative the development and spread of netnography, online ethnography of social media data, this paper explores the nature of the creation, legitimation, adoption, and spread of a new scientific method. Viewing method diffusion as a type of marketing suggests a range of implications. Ideas about the method can be viewed, treated, and managed as a type of ‘brand’. The method is not created in a vacuum but, like a marketed new product, is engineered to satisfy a particular scientific or investigative need, and its success depends on how well it satisfies that need. A particular ‘research-oriented segment’ can be investigated, reached, and deliberately targeted. In this article, I explore how institutional waves of academic, geographic, and pragmatic target research audiences helped to reinforce the adoption of a new scientific approach. The method can be positioned intentionally in a particular methodological category, and as superior to other methods. Once the strategy for marketing the method is intact, the tactics for its spread can be introduced. The ideas for the method and methodology can be brought to their audience in a particular form, with particular attributes, through certain distribution or publication channels, promoted through various means, and offered through for a ‘price’ that encapsulates the difficulty of adopting it. The article explores these ideas about the promulgation of a new method using the development of netnography as an extended case study example.
The concept of brand community has been used to understand how consumers create value around brands online. Recently consumer
researchers have begun to debate the relevance of this concept for understanding brand-related communication on social media.
Based on a data set of 8949 tweets about Louis Vuitton gathered on Italian Twitter in 2013, this article addresses these discussions
by developing the alternative concept of brand publics that differ from brand communities in three important ways. First, brand publics are social formations that are not based
on interaction but on a continuous focus of interest and mediation. Second, participation in brand publics is not structured
by discussion or deliberation but by individual or collective affect. Third, in brand publics consumers do not develop a collective
identity around the focal brand; rather the brand is valuable as a medium that can offer publicity to a multitude of diverse
situations of identity. The conclusion suggests that brand publics might be part of a social media–based consumer culture
where publicity rather than identity has become a core value.
What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers' ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd's conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.
Netnography is an interpretive, qualitative research method that was introduced to consumer research by Robert Kozinets. Netnography adapts social science ethnographic research techniques such as non-participative and participative observation, photographs, unstructured and structured interviews, and so forth, to explore the activities of cultures and communities that materialise in the online world through computer-mediated systems of information exchange. In my research, I have used participative netnography to explore the online self-presentation strategies of female fashion bloggers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. These women form a core part of the online Kate Middleton community and are ordinary individuals who employ ‘micro-celebrity’ strategies to establish and maintain a loyal group of online followers. Kate Middleton, Her Royal Highness Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, is the wife of Prince William and the mother of Prince George of the UK. Kate has an unprecedented effect on the British economy as the fashion brands she wears instantaneously sell out online. By outlining Kozinets’ guidelines and drawing on my own experiences of using netnography, I will demonstrate how social media content can be collected and analysed to provide a deep understanding of the cultural logic of celebrity.
Problem: This paper addresses the implications of working with vulnerable groups in the context of an online health community when members move from co-‐presence online to co-‐presence offline. Theoretical Approach: The case study presented in this paper challenges the expectation that self-‐revelations are usually more common in online environments because of the anonymity and comfort experienced there. Methodology: Taking as its example the events in a research project designed to investigate the relative features of online communities and social network sites by using a 'netnographic' approach, this paper examines the introduction of live chat sessions with a view to building social and emotional involvement in community members who had been, to that point, somewhat disengaged. Findings: On the fourth live chat, shortly before Christmas, one community member suggested that they meet for a meal, effectively moving the co-‐presence from the online community into the offline world. This duly occurred the following week, but the situation did not develop as the research team members had envisioned and instead they found themselves dealing with a member who, in person, was revealed to be feeling suicidal. Conclusion: Addressing the case study in terms of the implications of co-‐presence and self-‐ revelation in research settings, this paper goes on to describe the changes in policy and process instigated by the support organisation to prepare for other possible events of this nature.
Seniors’ online communities offer them a safe sphere for discussing sex-related concerns. This netnographic study explored the characteristics of sex-related discussions in such communities and followed online sex-related discussions that took place in 14 leading English language-based communities during one full year (2,534 posts). Analysis revealed that the discussions were simultaneously a source of valuable information and entertainment, and that they had an effect on members’ attitudes and offline sexual behavior. Battles between the discussions’ protagonists and antagonists provided additional “spice” to the rather amusing yet educational and beneficial discussions. Overall, results indicated that in a reality of limited alternatives for sex-related communication, seniors have found a channel to satisfy their needs for sex-related information and support.
Size is the first, and at times, the only dimension that leaps out at the mention of big data. This paper attempts to offer a broader definition of big data that captures its other unique and defining characteristics. The rapid evolution and adoption of big data by industry has leapfrogged the discourse to popular outlets, forcing the academic press to catch up. Academic journals in numerous disciplines, which will benefit from a relevant discussion of big data, have yet to cover the topic. This paper presents a consolidated description of big data by integrating definitions from practitioners and academics. The paper's primary focus is on the analytic methods used for big data. A particular distinguishing feature of this paper is its focus on analytics related to unstructured data, which constitute 95% of big data. This paper highlights the need to develop appropriate and efficient analytical methods to leverage massive volumes of heterogeneous data in unstructured text, audio, and video formats. This paper also reinforces the need to devise new tools for predictive analytics for structured big data. The statistical methods in practice were devised to infer from sample data. The heterogeneity, noise, and the massive size of structured big data calls for developing computationally efficient algorithms that may avoid big data pitfalls, such as spurious correlation.
Netnography, a naturalistic and predominantly unobtrusive technique developed by Kozinets for exploring online contributions, was the centrepiece of this appraisal. The authors argue that netnography could play a valuable role in enhancing our understanding of (a) rapidly changing tourist markets, (b) the growth of new markets and (c) the perspectives of culturally distinctive groups. The analysis of the blogs of Chinese recreational vehicle tourists who had visited Australia was chosen as a case study. In studying an emerging market segment from a rapidly changing and culturally different community, the case represented a key test of the value of the approach in generating insights. Practical steps to employ the method - entree, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation and member checks - were illustrated. Issues arising from the case study for the application of netnography in tourism research were highlighted. They included the value of the detail inherent in the postings, the attendant ability to consider the material using conceptual schemes, the practicality of getting additional information, the need to fully address ethical concerns and the value of supplementary perspectives. Suggestions for ways to adapt the technique for better information retrieval and interpretation were also provided.
Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on Amer- ica’s Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand’s identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelgänger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed.
Significance
We show, via a massive ( N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.
Social media monitoring is gradually becoming a common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. The main purposes of social media monitoring are strategic control and responsiveness. Social media monitoring poses normative questions in terms of transparency, accountability and privacy. We investigate practices of social media monitoring in four Dutch public organizations. Policy departments seem to be more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.
Using a Netnographic Grounded Theory approach to an online fan forum, a Virtual Community (VC), this article considers brand culture and value co-creation. The research site is a VC containing football fans who are viewed as stakeholders of the organisation Liverpool Football Club. Following a service-dominant logic (SDL) and consumer culture theory (CCT) approaches, analysis is conducted on fan consumer behaviour leading to the submission of a Typology of Seven Consumer Community Cultural Co-creative Roles. The authors reflect on existing theoretical consumer responses to market offerings of exit, voice, loyalty, and twist, found in extant literature, adopting these as four co-creative roles. This study contributes three new consumer co-creative roles of entry, re-entry, and non-entry. Managerial implications of the typology are discussed.
The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and other scholars are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Given the rise of Big Data as a socio-technical phenomenon, we argue that it is necessary to critically interrogate its assumptions and biases. In this article, we offer six provocations to spark conversations about the issues of Big Data: a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon that rests on the interplay of technology, analysis, and mythology that provokes extensive utopian and dystopian rhetoric.
The research takes the World Wide Web as its object of study, and introduces the ontological distinction between the objects, content, devices and environments that are 'born' in the new medium (the natively digital), as opposed to those that have 'migrated' to it (the digitized). It asks, should the current methods of study change given the focus on objects and content of the medium? The work thereby engages with 'virtual methods,' the current, dominant methodological approach to the study of the Internet, which imports standard methods from the social sciences and the humanities. That is, the distinction between the natively digital and the digitized also could apply to research methods. What kind of Internet research may be performed with methods that have been digitized (such as online surveys and directories) vis-à-vis those that are natively digital (such as recommendation systems and folksonomy)?
Second, Internet research may be put to new uses, given an emphasis on natively digital methods as opposed to the digitized. I seek to shift the attention from the opportunities afforded by transforming ink into bits, and also inquire into how research with the Internet may move beyond the study of online culture only. In order to do so, the overall digital methods research program builds software for collecting, storing, analyzing and visualizing online dynamics. How to capture and analyze hyperlinks, tags, search engine queries and other digital objects? How may one learn from how online devices (e.g., engines and recommendation systems) make use of the objects, and how may such uses be repurposed for social and cultural research? Ultimately, the project proposes a research practice that grounds claims about cultural change and societal conditions in online dynamics, introducing the term 'digital groundedness.' The overall aim is to rework method for Internet research, developing a novel strand of study, digital methods.
Purpose
– The electronic social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. have become a major form of communication, and the expression of attitudes and opinions, for the general public. Recently, they have also become a source of data for market researchers. This paper aims to provide a critical look at the advantages and limitations of such an approach to understanding brand perceptions and attitudes in the market place. Although the social media provide a wealth of data for automated content analyses, this review questions the validity and reliability of this research approach, and concludes that social media monitoring (SMM) is a poor substitute for in‐depth qualitative research which has many advantages and benefits.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper presents a detailed, systematic comparison of various research approaches. These include well‐established methods and recent inventions which are in use to explore and understand consumer behaviour and attitudes. Particular attention is given to the analysis of spontaneous consumer attitudes as expressed through the social media and also in qualitative research interviews.
Findings
– This analysis concludes that there are three critical features which differentiate qualitative research (as practised in IDIs and group discussions) from SMM. These are: the direct, interactive dialogue or conversation between consumers and researchers; the facility to “listen” and attend to the (sometimes unspoken) underlying narrative which connects consumers' needs and aspirations, personal goals and driving forces to behaviour and brand choice; and the dynamic, interactive characteristics of the interview that achieve a meeting of minds to produce a shared understanding. Philosophically, it is this “conversation” that gives qualitative research its validity and authenticity which makes it superior to SMM.
Originality/value
– This review questions the validity and reliability of the SMM, and concludes that it is a poor substitute for in‐depth qualitative research which has many advantages and benefits.
Purpose
This paper discusses how netnography can be applied in order to conduct covert research on sensitive research topics. An analysis of a Danish internet message board on cosmetic surgery illustrates suggestions concerning modifications of netnography guidelines.
Design/methodology/approach
Owing to the relevance of studying sensitive research topics – in particular when access to informants is difficult – netnography has been applied in an analysis of cross consumer online‐communication about cosmetic surgery on a Danish internet message board. Methodological stages and procedures including entreé, data collection, analysis and interpretation have been followed. In terms of research ethics and member checks, however, the suggested guidelines have been modified.
Findings
Empirical findings verify that consumers use internet message boards in order to exchange information and advice about cosmetic surgery. Especially the opportunity to masquerade and to cover their identities allows them to express attitudes, opinions, and experiences freely – and hence to study these in order gain deeper insights into consumption motives, concerns, and experiences.
Originality/value
The paper suggests that netnography is a suitable methodology for the study of sensitive research topics, enabling the researcher in an unobtrusive and covert way to gain deeper insights into consumers' opinions, motives, and concerns. Based on a discussion of netnography's position in between discourse analysis, content analysis and ethnography, it is argued for the legitimacy of covert research, including a revision of existing guidelines for research ethics with regard to informed consent when conducting netnography.
This article suggests the use of netnography in public relations studies of online communities. It shares lessons from an unplanned and unexpected experience with members of an online community. It demonstrates how, in an environment of trust, respondents to online surveys can become engaged with the research, discuss it on their own online forum, and provide rich data that goes beyond their answers to quantitative online questionnaires. It draws from the author's experience while conducting an empirical study on the role of public relations in facilitating community networks. More specifically, the online survey examined the work of community network organizers who used the online platform Meetup.com to organize offline face-to-face community group activities (). That research aimed at tracing the involvement of public relations in online networks. The unexpected post-survey engagement with the participants involved netnography that provided significant additional evidence and insight. The article calls for the use of netnography in PR research to expand PR scholars' understanding of relevant communities through analysis of their internal genuine online conversations and the way they process organizational messages. The call takes evidence from the actual research on Meetup organizers () to provide an example that demonstrates the potential benefit of using the emergent method of netnography.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper it to highlight the challenges of managing and handling data for services marketers that have been brought about by the contemporary environment and emerging schools of thought.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparison is made between conventional data collection and statistical analysis, and the need to glean information from large, pre-existing data sets for future contributions to service research.
Findings
For service marketers to tackle real world, large problem areas, there will be a need to develop methods of dealing with data which pre-exist in many forms, as well as data that are collected via well-established procedures.
Originality/value
The study should be an encouragement for services marketing researchers to develop innovative methods of data handling which recognize a world of burgeoning data sources and types.
How is consumer desire transformed by contemporary technology? Most extant theory holds
that technology rationalizes and reduces passion. In our investigation of networks of desire—
complex open systems of machines, consumers, energy and objects—we find technology
increasing the passion to consume. Effects depend upon participation in the network, which
can be private, public, or professional. Private participation tends to discipline passion into
interests reflecting established cultural categories. Public and professional participation build
new connections between extant desires and a wider network, decentering ties and
deterritorializing flows that limit hungers to emplaced bodies. Public and professional
participation drive consumption passion to transgressive extremes. We use ethnography and
netnography to study online food image sharing, a broad field that includes everything from
friend networks to food bloggers. Using and extending Deleuze and Guattari’s desire theory,
we conceptualize desire as energetic, connective, systemic, and innovative. Critically
examining the role of technocapitalism in the realm of consumption passion, we question
the emancipatory possibilities of unfettered desire. Networks of desire create a passionate
new universe of technologically enhanced desire, one that challenges the way we think
about consumer collectives, capitalism, emancipation, and posthuman consumption.
PurposeTo outline the current trajectories in digital social research and to highlight the roles of qualitative research in those trajectories.
Design/methodology/approachA secondary analysis of the primary literature.
FindingsQualitative research has shifted over time in relation to rapidly changing digital phenomena, but arguably finds itself in ‘crisis’ when faced with algorithms and ubiquitous digital data. However, there are many highly significant qualitative approaches that are being pursued and have the potential to contextualize, situate and critique narratives and practices of data.
Originality/valueTo situate current debates around methods within longer trajectories of digital social research, recognizing their conceptual, disciplinary and empirical commitments.
PurposeThis chapter critically evaluates the literature on digital consumer data and the ways in which it can be used in digital social research. The chapter illuminates how researchers have to conceptualise and negotiate digital data, focusing upon ethical and procedural challenges of employing digital methods.
ApproachThe chapter draws upon and integrates a broad research literature from sociology, digital media studies, business and marketing, as these have opened up new directions for research design and method. It advocates interdisciplinary approaches to conceptualising what digital data is employing the concept of ‘marketing narratives’ to understand how the new visibilities of consumer data are shaped by related processes of branding and the interactivity of content.
FindingsThe chapter shows how the capacities of digital technologies present significant challenges for researchers and organisations that have to be carefully negotiated if the potentials of digital consumer data are to be harnessed. In addition, researchers should pay attention to novel issues of ethical responsibility in the context of the longer-term presence of data records.
ValueThe chapter offers a set of guidelines for digital social researchers in negotiating the meanings of visible digital consumer data, the ethical and proprietary issues involved in utilising digital methods.
Although social media has become a source of interaction between consumers and their favorite brands, surprisingly little academic research has sought to understand how social media is situated within a firm's existing marketing communications strategy. In the present research, the authors conducted case studies with both managers and agency personnel responsible for making social media decisions in order to understand how managers incorporate social media into an existing marketing communications strategy. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted with these managers to understand their approach to social media, the challenges they face, and the solutions they have implemented. Findings suggest that managers categorize social platforms into four categories: relationship management, news gathering, creativity, and entertainment. Though social platforms differ in purpose, a cohesive brand personality is created across each platform by following the four C's of integration: consistency, customization, commitment, and caution. Findings offer insights into how brand managers position social media within the communications strategy and utilize different social media platforms to understand and address individual customer needs. The authors also suggest a number of tools to guide implementation and management of social media communications across platforms.
The book offers concepts, tools, tutorials, and case studies that business managers need to extract and analyze the seven layers of social media data, including text, actions, networks, apps, hyperlinks, search engines, and location layers. Social media analytics is about converting unstructured social media data into meaningful business insights. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the concepts, techniques, and tools used to extract business insights from social media that help increase brand loyalty, generate leads, drive traffic, and ultimately make good business decisions. The book is non-technical in nature best suited for business managers, owners, consultants, students, and professors, etc.
Here is how the book is structured:
Chapter 1: The Seven Layers of Social Media Analytics
Chapter 2: Understanding Social Media
Chapter 3: Social Media Text Analytics
Chapter 4: Social Media Network Analytics
Chapter 5: Social Media Actions Analytics
Chapter 6: Social Media Apps Analytics
Chapter 7: Social Media Hyperlinks Analytics
Chapter 8: Social Media Location Analytics
Chapter 9: Social Media Search Engine Analytics
Chapter 10: Aligning Social Media Analytics with Business Goals
The book also comes with a companion site (http://7layersanalytics.com/) which offers Updated Tutorials, Power-Point Slide, Case Studies, Sample Data, and Syllabus.
This article aims to contribute to long-standing debates on a dialectical relation between consumption and production. Whilst previous literature suggests an intermingling of consumption with production within economic spheres, individuals, firm-consumer interactions and consumer cultural processes, the discussion remains relatively stagnant when it comes to theorizing how the relationship between consumption and production is organized. In this article, I use a practice-theoretical perspective to reorient the discussion of the interplay between consumption and production to the level of practice performances. Complementing previous work on consumption as a moment in practice, this article theorizes consumption and production as alternate moments within practices of everyday living and unfolds how the relation between consumptive and productive moments is inscribed in a specific teleoaffective structure named facilitation. This advances an alternative view on craftsmanship, craft consumption and prosumption. Empirical material collected through interviews, observations, diaries and netnography within guitar playing and gardening systematically illustrates the theoretical proposals.
lienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amidst the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette N. Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding internet users by immersing herself in on-line reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of internet realities. While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the internet, she must learn how to be embodied there_a process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of cross-cultural understanding. Both new and not-so-new, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.
In this research, the authors jointly model the sentiment expressed in social media posts and the venue format to which it was posted as two interrelated processes in an effort to provide a measure of underlying brand sentiment. Using social media data from firms in two distinct industries, they allow the content of the post and the underlying sentiment toward the brand to affect both processes. The results show that the inferences marketing researchers obtain from monitoring social media are dependent on where they "listen" and that common approaches that either focus on a single social media venue or ignore differences across venues in aggregated data can lead to misleading brand sentiment metrics. The authors validate the approach by comparing their model-based measure of brand sentiment with performance measures obtained from external data sets (stock prices for both brands and an offline brand-tracking study for one brand). They find that their measure of sentiment serves as a leading indicator of the changes observed in these external data sources and outperforms other social media metrics currently used.
Twitter has become a major instrument for the rapid dissemination and subsequent debate of news stories, and comprehensive methodologies for systematic research into news discussion on Twitter are beginning to emerge. This paper outlines innovative approaches for large-scale quantitative research into how Twitter is used to discuss and cover the news, focusing especially on #hashtags: brief identifiers which mark a tweet as taking part in an established discussion.
Adjectives such as ‘scary’, ‘yucky’ and ‘bizarre’, used in connection with food in touristic experience, illustrate tourists’ propensity to ‘Other’. In this paper, I use netnographic tourist reviews of two cultural restaurants to explore tourists’ self-interpretation of the Other as represented in food. The findings are organized under four themes, namely, ‘scary, unusual food’, ‘eating the authentic Other’ and ‘the reassurance in mixing familiar with unfamiliar’. It is recommended that future research on food in tourism experience should explore contexts that have not previously been viewed as culinary destinations to create more ‘situated’ knowledge. Further, netnography offers a novel approach which could reveal tourists’ subjective realities that are provided more candidly than in traditional qualitative methods.
From the Publisher:Alienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amid the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette N. Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding Internet users by immersing herself in online reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the self-reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of Internet realities.
While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the Internet, she must learn how to be embodied there--a process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of cross-cultural understanding. Both new and not-so-new, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.
Increasingly, consumers interact through the Internet to share their knowledge, experiences, and opinions. Consequently, ‘word-of-mouse’ has become a significant market force that influences consumer decision-making. On the basis of extensive quantitative and qualitative research, the authors sketch how consumers make use of virtual communities as social and information networks, and how this affects their decision-making processes. We present three studies that address (i) determinants and effects of virtual community influence on the consumer decision process; (ii) virtual community participation patterns; and (iii) discussion practices of the most active community members. Key implications for managers, marketers, and market researchers are discussed.