Theme 6 Post 1

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

Paper: A very popular blog: The internet and the possibilities of publicity

Brenton J. Malin

The qualitative methods used in the paper are: analysis of earlier studies and literature as well as examination and analysis of real examples. The author is using these existing studies and combining them with newly studied examples in order to identify patterns in publicity.

It’s an extension of earlier work and the topic already has some established foundation. By combining different studies it allows for a broader perspective in the analysis, which might provide some new interesting insights. Not only does this give opportunities to expand on earlier work but it can also be a chance to replicate a study, at least the analytical part of it. Since this method is more of a observational one, it doesn’t require the researcher to design experiments. Doing experiments can be quite challenging and there are many variables to think about that could cause problems.

Since it’s mainly an interpretive and analytical method, the researcher will (more or less) influence the result. One researcher could see things from a different perspective than another would. A question then becomes: are the sources cited really the most relevant ones? Obviously it’s not that black and white and maybe there could be other more relevant papers. What’s important is diversity. By using multiple sources, you will hopefully have enough perspectives on the subject. This mix of perspectives is also important for building theory and it might help to reduce the subjectivity of the research, through a dialectic-like process.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

The main take away from the paper is that qualitative methods are quite flexible. The shape of the research is very much up to the author, as long as it can be motivated. In quantitative research there are many standardized ways of performing research and tools to use for analysis. Qualitative research is in a sense less strict and a bit broader. The author’s train of thought must be clearly outlined for the research not to succumb to pure speculation. But it also allows for making assumptions when there aren’t necessarily any hard evidence to support it.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

This study could try to include more perspectives. Sure, other studies are cited but it could for example have included interviews with people to see if the authors point of view is shared by other people.

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is a study where a particular situation is examined. The situation is taking place in a natural setting and the behaviors in it are what the researcher want to study. It’s different from other studies where experiments are set up in lab environments. The latter are quite different from normal situations and it can affect the test subjects’ behaviors. A goal with case studies is that more realistic (unaltered by external inputs) behavior is revealed. It can combine different research techniques and can be qualitative, quantitative or a combination of both. Examining more cases will likely increase the generalizability of the study. It is therefore also important to think about the selection of the case population. Having diversity in the cases can be a good thing since that could shine light on some patterns which wouldn’t have been identified otherwise.

An advantage of case studies is that they are observed continuously. It’s not just collection of answers and statistics, but given the context of a scenario it’s possible to stumble upon new insights. They can also help to explain why some behavior is observed, not just that it is.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

Paper: Gang violence on the digital street: Case study of a South Side Chicago gang member’s Twitter communication. Patton et. al (Published in New Media & Society 2016)

Building on earlier research on gang violence, this paper seeks out to understand whether there’s a link between online banging (aggressive and violent behavior) and gangs’ street behavior. The research is motivated mainly by the younger generation’s increased use of social media platforms. The author’s focus is on gangs in the Chicago area because of the many problems they’ve had with gang violence. The sampling of the population is not random. They have carefully chosen to focus their attention on one prominent female gang member. This is obviously a small sample and makes it hard to generalize the findings on a larger population. The method was mainly an analytical one and they chose to look at all the Twitter messages sent by the gang member and messages sent to or mentioning her. Only considering one social media platform is a limiting factor.

In a fresh topic like this it might be a good idea to do a case study, it could shed more light on the subject than limited literature would. However, the analysis in the paper is a bit thin and a big problem with this narrow approach is that it’s not possible to draw any general conclusions. It does however suggest that this topic might be interesting to look into more deeply in future research.