This Session:

What is Netnography?

How is it relevant to consumers and

markets? What data collection methods?
 Netnography: Cultural Analytics
❑ Conducting qualitative research using social media as the
basis of its datasets
❑ Contextualizes big data
❑ Delves into consumer-created spaces
❑ Allows you to unpack the cultural codes of consumer sub-
cultures
o Language
o Symbols
o Behaviors
o Self-understandings
 Netnography: Cultural Analytics
❑ Encompasses:
o Interviews
o Data scraping
o Archival work
o Online observation
❑ Engages with new forms of data collection:
o Visualization
o Thematic analysis
o Field-level rhetorical representation
 Social Media Users
❖ Facebook: 2.2 billion (monthly active users)
❖ Instagram: 800 million
❖ Twitter: 330 million
❖ Reddit: 250 million
❖ WeChat (Chinese): 1 billion
❖ Sina Weibo: 376 million
❖ V Kontakte (Russian): 480 million
❖ Odnoklassniki: 200 million
❖ Plus: Pinterest, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn…
Netnography Example: Consumer Perceptions of the Strategies
Used by Plus Size Models on Instagram

✓ Celebrity Connections
✓ Authenticity (appearing genuine and
unique)
✓ Connecting on a personal level with
consumers
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 Practices and Data Operations
❑ 4 Distinguishing elements (over other methods):
o Cultural Focus
• (ethnography – to ’write people’)
• Searches for meanings (social norms, customs, belief systems,
prohibitions)
o Social Media Data
• Social Listening
o Immersive Engagement
• It takes time!
o Netnographic Praxis
• Follows a set of procedures
 School of
Management

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6 Movements of Netnography
 INITIATION Movement 1

❑Investigating direction
❑Considering different topics
o E.g. an online phenomenon
❑Specifying the conceptual focus
o E.g. theoretical framework
❑Crafting the research question
❑Thinking about: ethics-access-data
collection
Netnographic Research Questions: Phenomena, Platforms,
Sites

❖ Netnographic research questions tend to focus on:

❑ Cultural phenomena manifesting online, e.g.:
o New languages / changes in / forms of symbolic communication
o Social media rituals
o New identities, fashions, etc.
o Shared stories, beliefs, desires
o Values and value systems
o Group dynamics, power structures, hierarchies

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Netnographic Research Questions: Phenomena, Platforms,
Sites

❖ Netnographic research questions tend to focus on:

❑ Social media platforms and sites, and their interactions with other aspects
of social existence
o How are sites gendered?
o How are particular topics discussed?
o How are themes or concepts revealed through discourse (e.g., how is
authenticity discussed and negotiated on classic rock forums?)
o How do forms of online communication differ from one another
o How do people use social media to communicate or educate one another about
practices, ideologies, information that might not be accessible anywhere?

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Starter Research Questions

❖ What can we learn about (topic x) from an empirical study of

(online phenomenon y)?

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 INVESTIGATION Movement 2

❑Focusing on the research question

❑Find suitable site(s)
❑Use search engines
o Topics/sub-topics
o hashtags/images
❑Landscape Mapping
❑Bounds (i.e. outlines) the conceptual
space
INVESTIGATION – 5 Core Data Operations
❑Simplification – translating RQs into
searchable search terms
❑Search – uncovering options for further
exploration
❑Scouting – seeking potential sites of data
for interactions/experiences
❑Selecting – deciding which data to gather
❑Saving – how to capture it
These operations are iterative and adapted
to specific research contexts
 Simplification

❑What search terms are helpful for your

(refined) research question?
❑Keywords, hashtags, trends or other
search terms
❑Remember acronyms or insider terms
you’ve come across
❑Use a thesaurus! (or Urban Dictionary…)
 Searching and Scouting
❑ Is it right to use this data (ethical issues)?
❑ Use search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo,
DuckDuckgo, Ask.com, etc.
❑ Remember visual search facilities (Google
images) & go to original site
o Social Media sites: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, blogs, forums, Reddit
o Wikis, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Yelp reviews
❑ Searching works iteratively with Scouting to see
where good data is

Scouting asks “Will this help

answer my RQ?”
 Selecting (data)– Key Criteria
❑ Relevance – to RQ & research focus (Keywords
not always a good indicator)
❑ Activity – recency and regularity of information
flows
❑ Interactivity – looking for dynamic soc. med.
conversations (often comments section of
blogs/vlogs most interesting)
❑ Diversity – are there expressions of different
perspective & viewpoints?
❑ Richness – detailed stories/descriptions rather
than short tweets (+photos, videos,podcasts)
 Saving Data

❑Screen Shots
❑Print & Save
❑Copy and Paste
❑Scraping Programs