I selected a article from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication named
Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes,
Behaviors and Unintended Consequences (impact factor of 1,958) [1].
The paper investigates Facebook users awareness of privacy issues and perceived benefits and risks of utilizing Facebook. They used both a quantitative method (online survey, N=119) and a qualitative method by selecting eight respondents for an open-ended in-depth face-to-face interview.
By combining the two methods they both received information about the respondents Facebook habits such as time on Facebook, number of times per day (survey), and also a deeper understanding of their habits and experience (typological reduction content analysis).
By using a combination of different qualitative methods with the interviews the writers got a deeper insight into attitudes and behaviors to Facebook and they could relate that to the quantitative data such as usage and pre knowledge about privacy on Facebook. They also found from that the qualitative interviews corroborated with the survey finding and therefore making the paper more trustworthy. By combining both the methods they could complement the limitation in the quantitative (no deeper understanding) with the qualitative method and complementing the limitation with qualitative (no measure to make comparisons with) with a quantitative method.
Before I read the paper I didn’t know much about different qualitative methods. In the paper they used a combination of qualitative content analysis, typological reduction analysis, and hermeneutical/rhetorical interpretation. This combination of qualitative analysis is particularly fruitful when dealing with a novel field that is not yet structured and requires preliminary understanding. It is mostly based on the summarizing reduction of the material and the inductive development of analytical categories from it and, in a second step, the deductive application of categories to interpret the data.
Because they used a combination of methods in this paper I had a hard time finding methodological problems. One thing that came to mind is the number of interviews they did. They had in-depth interviews with 8 out of 120 people. It might be so that these people are not representative. But on the other hand so did they base their choices of people on the survey and therefore they might have thought about different types of people. I also feel like 120 people are a bit to few to make the result generalizable. Also the fact that they only collected samples from one university might have negative effects on the result. Another issue might be the subject of the study. I feel like many might not want to admit that they don’t know what their share or not on Facebook and therefore compromising the result.
I also read a paper called Cross-pollination of Information in Online Social Media: A Case Study on Popular Social Networks [2]. In this paper they used a case study and examined how information from three online social media is shared on Twitter.
A case study is a research method that focuses on understanding the dynamics present within a single setting. Is more of a in-depth study of a single (or multiple) case, such as a person, event or a group.
The paper is very well written and conducted and combining that with that case study is something new to me makes analyzing very hard. The paper examines an area by using a program that collects tweets, then filters and sorts them. One thing that came to mind is that they only focused of keywords to Fifa World Cup 2010, witch is a very specific topic. But on the other hand is football huge so it might not be a big issue.
Another thing that came to mind is that for what I understand the program they used in the study (developed by Brazilian Research Institute) filters the tweets automatically. It would mean that there is no room for the authors to see what tweet that gets filter away. I would say that it makes generalization hard.
The paper investigates Facebook users awareness of privacy issues and perceived benefits and risks of utilizing Facebook. They used both a quantitative method (online survey, N=119) and a qualitative method by selecting eight respondents for an open-ended in-depth face-to-face interview.
By combining the two methods they both received information about the respondents Facebook habits such as time on Facebook, number of times per day (survey), and also a deeper understanding of their habits and experience (typological reduction content analysis).
By using a combination of different qualitative methods with the interviews the writers got a deeper insight into attitudes and behaviors to Facebook and they could relate that to the quantitative data such as usage and pre knowledge about privacy on Facebook. They also found from that the qualitative interviews corroborated with the survey finding and therefore making the paper more trustworthy. By combining both the methods they could complement the limitation in the quantitative (no deeper understanding) with the qualitative method and complementing the limitation with qualitative (no measure to make comparisons with) with a quantitative method.
Before I read the paper I didn’t know much about different qualitative methods. In the paper they used a combination of qualitative content analysis, typological reduction analysis, and hermeneutical/rhetorical interpretation. This combination of qualitative analysis is particularly fruitful when dealing with a novel field that is not yet structured and requires preliminary understanding. It is mostly based on the summarizing reduction of the material and the inductive development of analytical categories from it and, in a second step, the deductive application of categories to interpret the data.
Because they used a combination of methods in this paper I had a hard time finding methodological problems. One thing that came to mind is the number of interviews they did. They had in-depth interviews with 8 out of 120 people. It might be so that these people are not representative. But on the other hand so did they base their choices of people on the survey and therefore they might have thought about different types of people. I also feel like 120 people are a bit to few to make the result generalizable. Also the fact that they only collected samples from one university might have negative effects on the result. Another issue might be the subject of the study. I feel like many might not want to admit that they don’t know what their share or not on Facebook and therefore compromising the result.
I also read a paper called Cross-pollination of Information in Online Social Media: A Case Study on Popular Social Networks [2]. In this paper they used a case study and examined how information from three online social media is shared on Twitter.
A case study is a research method that focuses on understanding the dynamics present within a single setting. Is more of a in-depth study of a single (or multiple) case, such as a person, event or a group.
The paper is very well written and conducted and combining that with that case study is something new to me makes analyzing very hard. The paper examines an area by using a program that collects tweets, then filters and sorts them. One thing that came to mind is that they only focused of keywords to Fifa World Cup 2010, witch is a very specific topic. But on the other hand is football huge so it might not be a big issue.
Another thing that came to mind is that for what I understand the program they used in the study (developed by Brazilian Research Institute) filters the tweets automatically. It would mean that there is no room for the authors to see what tweet that gets filter away. I would say that it makes generalization hard.
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6932
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