MN5618 Applied Digital Research School of

Management

Skills

Lecturer: Pauline Maclaran

Session 3/ Lecture 5
Netnographic Immersion and Interaction
 Session Plan School of
Management

Session 3: 15th May

Engagement, Immersion & Interaction (data
collection)
Ethical issues

2
 TASK: RQS and Landscape Mapping School of
Management

 In your groups finalise a working research question

 Remember: Pick a topic – find an aspect to focus on
 Who/what/where/when (be specific on these points)

 Then undertake searching/scouting of the internet and

create a landscape map:
 A landscape map is a visual representation of sites
containing communications relevant to a particular
research question
3
For Assignment 2 (Individual Reflective Essay) School of
Management

By the time you write this reflective essay,

you should have carried out steps 3-5!

4
5 Types of Netnographic Engagement Strategies School of
Management

 Intellectual- deliberate efforts to gain deeper conceptual understanding

o Questioning on particular ideas
o Mapping of structures/relations
o Unpicking the taken-for-granted

 Cultural – use of terms, symbols, rituals etc

o Seeking deeper understanding of these
o Material engagement (preparing a recipe/visting a named location etc)

 Historical – delving into the past (myth, origins, traditions)

o What forces constructed this? (E.g. The Red Pill & rise of feminism)

 Emotional – focusing on feelings & sharing the emotion

 Social – being involved with people through interaction
 IMMERSION Movement 3 School of
Management

 Inhabiting the conceptual space

 Understanding the cultural focus
o Use of new language & symbols
o Adoption of new identities
o Storytelling, sharing of beliefs, images & media
o Reinforcing value systems
o Relations of power & group dynamics

 Immersion includes data recording &

indexing
 Keep research notes/entries in a journal
o May be textual, graphic, audiovisual
 School of
Management

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 Matrix of Community Membership School of
Management

Rob Kozinets – “Field behind the Screen”

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 Keeping an Immersive Journal School of
Management

 Can be written individually or by team (shared

online docs etc)
 A temporal narrative of fieldwork
 May include visual/video data
 Includes thoughts, reactions, feelings
& readings (may relate to theory)

Whereas INTERACTION is about data collection,

IMMERSION is more about the writing & curation
of the data
 Keeping an Immersive Journal cont’d. School of
Management

 Reconnoitering
o Mapping out the territory
o Continuous sense-making
 Recording
o Chronicling your quest
o May have agreed headings if in a team
 Researching
o Considering different theories
o An interative process
 Reflection
o First person introspection
 EXERCISE School of
Management

Working in your teams think of

common observation
points/processes/temporal
factors you might want to all
record for your agreed topic
 INTERACTION Movement 4 School of
Management

 Explicit questioning (if essential) and/ or research

engagement
 To explore nuances or larger themes
 To elaborate unclear meanings in more depth
 To raise overlooked topics (relevant to RQ)
 Options for interactions include:
o Interviews (individual/focus)
o Creation of netnographic interaction webpage
o Keeping a digital diary (participants)
o Mobile ethnography techniques
EXAMPLES of Social Desirability Bias: Men Lie! School of
Management

 Perhaps the most common complaint about social groups is that

consumers are not honest in front of other people. America Online
Inc. saw a disconnect between what men revealed in social groups
and the complaints about spam it received by e-mail. It turned out
that men, in a room with strangers, were not keen to admit they
didn't have full command of their laptops. But in e-mails, they
conceded that they were tortured by underperforming spam
blockers.
 Observing and interviewing men at their keyboards led to a
revamp of the AOL blocker and an ad campaign publicizing the
change. "There's peer pressure insocial groups that gets in the way
of finding the truth about real behavior and intentions," says John B.
Osborne, chief executive officer of BBDO, New York, AOL's ad
agency.
 Women Lie Too! School of
Management

 Some of the new solutions displacing focus groups don't rely on consumers to
sort through their feelings at all. Instead, companies get more useful feedback
just from watching daily life.
 In spring 2003, Kimberly-Clark Corp saw sales of Huggies baby wipes slip. Focus
groups weren't yielding any compelling insights. Then a K-C senior designer
came up with a new approach: a camera...at home. "Letting us see what they
see…" says Becky Walter, innovation and design chief. It didn't take long to spot
the opportunities. While women in focus groups talked about changing
babies at a diaper table, the truth was they changed them on beds, floors,
and on top of washing machines in awkward positions. The researchers could
see they were struggling with wipe containers and lotions requiring two hands.
The company redesigned the wipe package with a push-button one-handed
dispenser and designed lotion and shampoo bottles that can be grabbed and
Business
dispensedWeek Online,
easily Novhand.
with one 14th, 2005, “Shoot the Focus Group”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_46/b3959145.htm
 INTERACTION - Interviews School of
Management

 May be individual or group

 Must have informed consent first
 Use: video - Skype, Zoom, Messenger, Whatsapp (etc)-
phone,email, posts to forums/webpage
 Synchronous versus asynchronous (like open-ended survey)
 Need for consistency across platforms (more or less
visual/personal)
 Structured - unstructured
 Timing can vary from 5-90 mins!
 Taking position of insider or outsider (either works
depending on context)
 Discussion guide useful
 Asking Good Interview Questions School of
Management

 Background – start with these – tell me a bit about yourself?.

 Sensory – how would you describe your typical experience on F/B?

 Opinion & values – what do you think about F/B as a corporation?

 Knowledge – what do you know about the recent evasion by

Google?

 Feelings – How do you feel about fake news? Tell me about your
reactions to the last fake report you received?

 Demographic – what is your age/occupation etc.?

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 Potential Prompts and Probes School of
Management

 Asking for more details, chasing the

specifics: who,what, where, when and
how
 Who else was on Facebook that time?
 What were you posting?
 When did you start going to that website?
 How did that discussion thread start?
 Tell me more….
 Describe that to me in more detail…

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INTERACTION – Creating a Webpage School of
Management

To give clear information

May create this through Can also present visual
about researcher(s) and
Facebook information
the research project

May also present Researcher invites/directs

Provides a dedicated
information that is useful to the website through
online format to ask
or amusing to the public posts, direct
questions & elicit
research participants as a messages, Youtube video,
responses
reward/incentive circulated meme

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 School of
Management

https://www.e-marketingassociates.com
/blog/latest-webpage-design-trends-that-you-should-use-in
19 -2020
 INTERACTION – Keeping a Digital Diary School of
Management

 Participants asked to keep regular journals of their

experiences
 Going deeper into daily practices
 Complements interviews/observations
 Blogs can be a type of digital diary
 Introspecting can be useful
 May include photos, video, sound files as well as text
 May use online platforms or devices
 School of
Management

Indeemo: Using a mobile ethnography research app to

understand the student journey
https://indeemo.com/path-to-purchase/using-mobile-ethnographic-research-app-to-
21 understand-a-student-journey-and-path-to-purchase