Using the internet as a research tool

The use of internet in research has been reportedly on increase. Different approaches have been taken by scholars to expound how the internet as a medium of interaction can be useful in research, including researchers within the fields of education and linguistics. The interaction that is mediated by the internet is identified as ‘computer-mediated communication’ (CMC). This has become a discipline, and has gained much scholarly attention. In this blog, I shall give a brief overview of CMC studies and how to use the CMC modes in research, which may represent the context of the study or might be used as a setting for data collection. Also, I also shall take the opportunity to acknowledge that there will be another blogging site to cover the study of CMC in detail that will be launched soon.

CMC studies

CMC studies started during the 1980s (Bieswanger, 2013). CMC-based interaction are identified as asynchronous (e.g., Facebook and LinkedIn discussion groups) and synchronous (e.g., online chat), Fritz (2017, p.284) differentiates between the two as follows:

[I]n synchronous exchanges, participants are only spatially separated; they are logged on into the system (e.g., a chat client) simultaneously and are thus temporally co-present, which facilitates quick exchanges in real-time (or at least with minimal delays). In contrast, in asynchronous computer-mediated communication participants do not need to be online at the same time and can retrieve and react to messages at a later point.

Various modes of digital communication were theorised to gain more understandings of how users interact, and different modalities can be researched including spoken and written communications (Jucker, 2018a). Here are some examples of the CMC modes that have been investigated:

• Emails (Waldvogel, 2001; Panteli, 2002; Morand and Ocker 2003; Job-Sluder and Barab 2004; Kankaanranta 2005; Kaul and Kulkarni 2005; Waldvogel, 2007); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
• Internet Relay Chat (Werry, 1996; Danet, 2001; Paolillo and Zelenkauskaite, 2013); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
• Text messaging (Schlobinski et al., 2001; Androutsopoulos and Schmidt, 2002; Döring, 2002; Herring and Zelenkauskaite, 2008, 2009; Thurlow and Poff, 2013); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
• Online discussion forums (Schlobinski and Watanabe, 2003; Schlobinski and Siever, 2005); (as cited in Herring et al, 2013)
• and more recently online social networks such as Facebook (Androutsopoulos, 2015; Tagg et al., 2017; Zappavigna, 2012, 2018) and LinkedIn (Rapanta and Cantoni, 2017)

Researchers may take different perspectives to investigate the phenomena within CMC modes including, but not limited to these, the pragmatic, interactional, structural, and psycholinguistic perspectives. The focus of CMC studies have been on the use of emoticons, emojis, stickers, pictures, videos, abbreviations, languages, narratives, migrants’ practices, identity performance and performativity, etc. to examines coherence, cohesion, politeness, relevance, speech act, turn taking, performatives, genre, discourse topic, rapport management, etc. There has not been a single methodological orientation of how to research the specific phenomena within the different modes, as researchers aims to obtain the required data and findings.

The context of the study

The context of the study should be investigated not assumed (Varis, 2016).  The context of the study may involve ‘sub-contexts’, and this is what we mean by a ‘multi-layered context’. Explaining the context may also help researchers to identify the ethical concerns, and each sub-context may require a different ethical obligation. Page et al. (2014, p.33) pointed to the following sub-contexts, which might be involved in a CMC study:

• participants (e.g. inviting some participants for  interviews or focus group discussions)
• imagined context which is “created cognitively by participants on the basis of their knowledge and the cues provided in CMC”;
• extra-situational context such as “the offline practices in which the participants are involved”;
• behavioural context which represents “the physical situation in which the participants interact via social media”;
• textual context which includes “the surrounding interactions (the text published in preceding and subsequent posts or comments)”; and
• generic context which refers to “the social media site in which the communication takes place including the site’s stated purpose, rules and norms for conduct”

Data collection

For example, researchers may collect data that come in the form of conversations (e.g. from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), messages (e.g., WhatsApp), and narratives (e.g., blogs and forums). CMC data can be collected by following different procedures, such as creating discussing boards (e.g. on Facebook) or joining existing discussion groups to observe users’ interactions. BERA (2018) has produced comprehensive ethical guidelines which can be consulted to address the ethical obligations for research into a digital environment.

Mixed-method research

Mixed methods can occur at the level of methods of both data collection and data analysis (Biesta, 2010). If the context is multi-layered, there might be a need to employ different methods for data collection, because some methods may enable towards a further exploration of the phenomena in a particular context or a sub-context (Feilzer, 2010). The selected methods should address the research questions (Bryman, 2006). The use of mixed methods reflect the process of ‘triangulation’, which is two types (Morse, 1991; as cited in Johnson et al., 2007, p.115):

simultaneous triangulation represents the simultaneous use of qualitative and quantitative methods in which there is limited interaction between the two sources of data during the data collection stage, but the findings complement one another at the data interpretation stage. On the other hand, sequential triangulation is utilized when the results of one approach are necessary for planning the next method.

Also, different methods can be used to analyse the data – for example, conducting some statistical analyses and discourse analysis for the data collected through observations and thematic analysis for interviews. Jucker (2018b, p.335) explains that:

Quantitative research is not possible without a qualitative foundation […] Qualitative research, on the other hand, appears to be possible without any quantification of its categories, except that the qualitative description of categories in a set of data always makes the, to some extent, quantitative point that this category at least exists in this particular set of data.

Further details on the study of CMC from different perspectives will be published in another blogging websites that I will launch soon. The blogging website will focuses on multimodality and affordances, multilingual CMC, language change, stylisation, transmedia, digital media, and more. In each blog, I related to the theoretical and methodological framework that have been used. Stay in touch!

References

Androutsopoulos, J.  (2015). Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism. 19 (2), pp. 185–205. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367006913489198 [Accessed 26 March 2020].

Biesta, G. (2010). Pragmatism and the philosophical foundations of mixed methods research. In: Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2nd ed.), Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 95–117.

Bieswanger, M. (2013). Micro-linguistic features of computer-mediated communication. In: Herring, S. C., Stein D. & Virtanen, T. (eds.) (2013). Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 463-485.

British Educational Research Association [BERA] (2018)Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fourth edition, London. https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018  

Bryman, A. (2006). Paradigm peace and the implications of quality. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9 (2), pp.111–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645570600595280

Feilzer, M. Y. (2010). Doing mixed methods research pragmatically: Implications for the rediscovery of pragmatism as a research paradigm. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 4 (1), pp.6–16. DOI: 10.1177/1558689809349691

Fritz, E. (2017). Discourse and topic. In: Hoffmann, C.  R. & Bublitz, W.  (eds.). (2017). Pragmatics of Social Media, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp.275–316.

Herring, S., Stein, D. & Virtanen, T. (eds.) (2013).Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton

Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. J. & Turner, L.A. (2007). Toward a definition of mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods research, 1(2), pp.112-133. DOI: 10.1177/1558689806298224

Jucker, A.H. (2018a). Data in pragmatic research. In: A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics, pp.3–36. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Jucker, A.H. (2018b). Observational pragmatics. In: A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics, pp.335–342. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Page, R., Barton, D., Unger, J.W., & Zappavigna, M. (2014). Researching language and social media: A student guide. London and New York: Routledge.

Tagg, C., Seargeant, P., Brown, A.A., (2017). Taking Offence on Social Media: Conviviality  and  Communication  on  Facebook.  Switzerland: Palgrave  Macmillan.

Varis, P. (2016). Digital Ethnography. In Georgakopoulou, A. & Spilioti, T (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication. UK: Routledge.

Zappavigna, M., (2012). Discourse of Twitter and Social Media. Continuum, London.

Zappavigna, M., (2018). Searchable Talk: Hashtags and Social Media Metadiscourse. Bloomsbury, London.