“COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IS NOT JUST A TOOL; IT IS AT ONCE TECHNOLOGY, MEDIUM AND ENGINE OF SOCIAL RELATIONS. STEVEN G. JONES, CYBERSOCIETY Interviewing and the Internet

Kramer & Xie (2008) Great paragraph about qual interviewing (p. 258). What media choice should you make when doing qualitative interviews? IM, , telephone, F-t-F? or, do you let the participant chose how to interact??? Are you and/or is your participant ‘comfortable’ with the media? Not the time to ‘try out’ the technology. Scheduling and retaining participants is still a challenge, consider trade offs for phone vs. IM vs. vs. f-t-f? What are some of the advantages to conducting interviews through IM or ?

Contextual Naturalness Can participants can use language the way they do in my of their everyday interactions? If you are researching aspects of ‘being online,’ then consider doing the interview in the same ‘setting’ in which participants normally engage in that activity. Consider the synchronous or synchronous nature of the interaction. Probing? Privacy and/or use of the data? Participants’ sharing?

Other Considerations 1. Conversational “disorder” or less ‘flow’ at times because of timing of reading and writing on IM. You do see spelling, language use, grammar, emoticons, etc. Let’s try it – FB and Joe. 1. Organizing online ‘transcripts’ or various sources of data can be a challenge; you preserve the text with ‘double documentation’ – what is the trade off? 2. Better research conversations online? Debates. Clarity vs. ‘hearing’ the thinking process and natural talk? Participants’ editing of s vs. IM vs. F-t-F Participants get to decide textual representation vs. transcriber

Other Considerations (con’t) 4. Affective Data: visual anonymity can promote self- disclosure; but, researchers need to still pay attention to the process of rapport building online. 5. Must use your ‘online social skills’ to encourage self-disclosure and the use of emoticons or other affective responses (‘questions about feelings’) 6. Affect is still occurring (and researcher is still interpreting affect) but who and how is it represented?

On the internet... Conducting ‘virtual’ focus groups (see newly posted optional reading under 11/28) Computer Software exists for collecting focus group (and other research data). QualBoard:: Just google to see for-profit e-focus groups Real Time (synchronous) vs. Bulletin Board (questions posted each day for 3-to-5 days)

Focus groups and ‘Virtual Focus Groups’ Why focus groups? (Morgan reading)  Bring group together for guided conversation  Participant selection depends on purpose  Research use vs. Marketing/Prod Development/Customer Feedback  Advantages:  Captures ‘real life’ interactions among participants  Group dynamics might bring out new issues  Flexible (varying levels of moderation and structure)  High face validity, speedy and lower cost than individual interviews  Disadvantages:  Harder to ‘control’ or moderate than one-on-ones; facilitation skills  Data more complex to analyze  Group is challenging to recruit and assemble  Differences between focus groups can be challenging for analysis

Research Projects Get, at a minimum, 2 rounds of feedback from me on your ‘proposal, including: purpose, justification, and literature review. Proposal becomes ‘Working Paper’ or master document for your project. Next: method sections**  Participants (who they actually are)  Data Collection Procedures  Analysis Procedures

Moving on to Analysis Given that we’re talking about technology AND moving on to analysis... Let me show you one software program: QSR*NVivo

What to bring next week? Bring ‘field notes’ – should include notes you made to yourself after each interview (and/or any other ways you’ve documented your conversations or observations) Have ‘summary’ sheet for each participant (minimum for next week is to have 3-4 summaries at the least); listen back to each interview and ‘record’ responses to questions; key issues, etc. You will turn in summaries to me... You don’t have to have ‘verbatim’ transcripts, but if there are segments of talk which are v. powerful, illustrative or key to your RQs, try to transcribe closely** Methods draft – put it into your ‘master document’ and it to me as well...