Connecting qualitative + quantitative in social media research

Three people texting using smartphonesTHATCamp happens to fall in the middle of a project I am working on involving the social media app Yik Yak. So far I have had no trouble pulling user posts from the app (I have done similar projects with Twitter and Reddit), but I want to supplement this textual data with ethnographic interviews with users, similar to danah boyd’s social media research. This is a new approach for me, and so I am interested in discussing, collaborating, and learning more about this type of research at THATCamp. I am open to discuss any aspect of social media research projects, including:

  • Using APIs to access social media data
  • Tools for quantitative analysis of textual social media data
  • Recruiting participants from online communities for in-person interviews
  • Interview strategies for contextualizing social media data
  • Grounded theory approaches to coding and analysis
  • Ethical issues in online community research
  • Social media research projects in the classroom

2 Responses to Connecting qualitative + quantitative in social media research

  1. Your post suggests to me issues of objective scoring of interview materials in the transition to quantitative research. I am in conversation with lots of folks who do this although I mostly defer to their recommendations on the mechanics. How do you engage this level of data manipulation?

    • In the past, I have used born-digital data, and have focused on computer assisted text-based approaches. Now I am interested in incorporating qualitative interviews with users and coding of online data based on insight from these conversations. I am interested in connecting with people who have done or are interested in doing similar projects