Search results

Employing ethnographic methods online offers additional understanding of how online contexts are connected to education (Rusk, 2019; Ståhl & Kaihovirta, 2019; Ståhl & Rusk, 2020). As society evolves, new challenges arise for ethnography to claim its position as a methodology for understanding human sociality. For example, the definition of fieldwork might become blurred when the researcher has constant access to the field from their computer, and accessing a participant's perspective is made more complex when there is no, or limited, face-to-face interaction with participants (Beaulieu, 2004; Shumar & Madison, 2013). This chapter discusses some of the challenges experienced during the process of employing ethnographic methods with students playing the online multiplayer video game Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO, Valve Corporation & Hidden Path Entertainment, 2012) within an educational context. The challenges included maintaining participant integrity in terms of gaining informed consent from players that became co-observed, defining privacy online during the analysis and in dissemination and portraying participants accurately despite stakeholder interests. These challenges are discussed in relation to maintaining research ethics in situ together with participants and with the research context in mind. The intention is not to portray our approach as best practice, but rather to highlight and discuss the challenges faced.

This chapter discusses the differences between face-to-face and online ethnographies of Scottish Country Dancing. It draws on fieldwork conducted firstly in Lyon in 2017 and subsequently in Edinburgh in 2017–2018, with further fieldwork in Edinburgh, due to the global pandemic, now taking place online. Online Scottish Country Dancing is challenging, especially given that this social dancing requires a partner and space. Due to the pandemic, how and why individuals do online dancing has shifted because people can now link in and across different locations. As a researcher as well as a dancer, my current project utilises blended ethnography, including textual analysis, fieldnotes, participant observations, interviews and surveys. Conducting online ethnographic practices raises specific ethical considerations and challenges, most notably concerning who is being observed and whether the participants are aware of being observed. This chapter addresses how the research aims to adapt ethnography from face-to-face fieldwork to online situations, in response to the impact of COVID-19 and associated ethical challenges.

While quantitative survey design represents a default research method in the field of hospitality and tourism, qualitative approaches remain largely sidelined. This is particularly true for netnography, a novel method of scientific enquiry that targets the online interactions of various actors. The present chapter seeks to introduce the netnographic approach, outline its implementation in hospitality and tourism, as well as demarcate it from other methods, such as survey, text mining and content analysis. By giving an overview of recent studies employing netnography, the chapter demonstrates applied examples of ethnographic research online, presents a cross-cultural study on disappointing travel experiences and suggests further research avenues, such as cross-cultural investigation. It concludes by discussing strengths and weaknesses of the netnographic approach. The value of this chapter lies in its reflection of state-of-the-art research in hospitality and tourism based on netnography and the proposition of further directions of research.

This paper aims to examine social media communication that may consist of a database for online research and may create an online imagined community that follows special language symbols and shares common beliefs in a similar way to Anderson’s imagined communities.

Well-known databases were searched in the available literature for specific keywords which were associated with the imagined community, and methodological tools such as online interviews, content analysis, archival analysis and social media.

The paper discusses the use of multiple measures, such as document and archival analysis, online interviews and content analysis, which may derive from the online imagined community that social media create. Social media may in fact provide useful data that are available for research, yet are relatively understudied and not fully used in communication research, not to mention in archival services. Comparison takes place between online community’s characteristics and traditional communication research. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media’s use of special language requirements may categorise discussion of these potential data, based on specific symbols, topical threads, purposeful samples and catering for longitudinal studies.

Social media have not been fully implemented for online communication research yet. Online communication may offer significant implications for marketers, advertisers of a company or for an organisation to do research on or for their target groups. The role of libraries and information professionals can be significant in data gathering and the dissemination of such information using ICTs and renegotiating their role.

The theoretical contribution of this paper is the examination of the creation of belonging in an online community, which may offer data that can be further examined and has all the credentials to do so, towards the enhancement of online communication research. The applications of social media to research and the use by and for information professionals and marketers may in fact contribute to the management of an online community with people sharing similar ideas. The connection of the online imagined community with social media for research has not been studied, and it would further enhance understanding from organisations or marketers.

Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.

A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.

The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.

This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.

Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.

Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.

Qualitative research has made important contributions to social science by enabling researchers to engage with people and get an in-depth understanding of their views, beliefs and perceptions about social phenomena. With new and electronically mediated forms of human interaction (e.g. the online world), there are new opportunities for researchers to gather data and participate with or observe people in online groups. The purpose of this paper is to present features, challenges and possibilities for online ethnography as an innovative form of qualitative research.

Ethnography is about telling a story about what happens in a particular setting or settings. In order to do this online, it is important to revisit, adopt and adapt some ideas about traditional (offline) ethnography. The paper distinguishes online ethnography from other types of research. It draws some generic features of online ethnography and identifies challenges for it. With these ideas in mind the paper presents and provides a reflection of an online ethnography of software developers.

Online ethnography can provide valuable insights about social phenomena. The paper identifies generic features of this approach and a number of challenges related to its practice. These challenges have to do with to the choice of settings, use of online data for research, representation of people and generation of valuable and useful knowledge. The paper also highlights issues for future consideration in research and practice.

The ethnography helped the researcher to identify and address a number of methodological challenges in practice and position herself in relation to relevant audiences she wanted to speak to. The paper also suggests different orientations to online ethnography. Lessons learned highlight potential contributions as well as further possibilities for qualitative research in the online world.

Online ethnography offers possibilities to engage with a global audience of research subjects. For academics and practitioners the paper opens up possibilities to use online tools for research and it shows that the use of these tools can help overcome difficulties in access and interaction with people and to study a diversity of research topics, not only those that exist online. The paper offers guidance for researchers about where to start and how to proceed if they want to conduct online ethnography and generate useful and valuable knowledge in their area of interest.

This paper aims to present a systematic review of tourism articles using qualitative online methods. By focussing on tourism journals, this work explores the paradigmatic beliefs, methodological approaches and methods underpinning tourism qualitative online research.

This review was conducted systematically by following the reporting checklist of the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination.

Overall, this systematic review indicates that the ontological and epistemological beliefs guiding online research are not clearly expressed by tourism scholars. It also shows that the possibility of using the internet for more interactive and participatory forms of research has not been fully explored by tourism scholars.

This paper expands tourism scholars’ awareness of the range of qualitative approaches/methods available by suggesting additional research instruments that could replace or complement the traditional ones. However, by selecting only indexed journal papers, other sources of publications, such as papers published in non-Scopus and non-Web-of-Science journals, books, book chapters and conference papers, were not included in the current review.

This work emphasizes the important role of cyberspace in facilitating virtual interactions between researchers and participants in the co-construction of qualitative empirical material.

本文运用了互联网在线定性管理方法对旅游管理进行了具体及系统的评估。通过关注旅游期刊, 本文探索旅游在线定性管理的规范模式和方法研究。

本文依据评审和传播中心的系统鉴定标准（PRISMA）进行深入的分析和探索。

目前的旅游学术研究并未明确诠释或指导互联网对旅游管理的在线评估, 及其本体论和认知理念。利用互联网进行旅游评估的探索, 提升相关互动性和参与性都将成为旅游管理的潜在发展方向。

在现有定性管理方法的基础上, 本文提出可用于替代或补充传统研究方法的在线虚拟互动评估模式, 并开扩了学术界对旅游定性鉴定的新方法和认识。但是, 本文的研究主体仅为有索引的旅游学术期刊 （如：Scopus indexed journals）, 非索引的研究期刊和发表文献, 如书籍, 探讨会文稿都不包括在本文研究范围内。

本文构建了互联网在线定性管理的模式, 并强调了现代网络在促进管理研究人员和相关参与者之间虚拟互动中所扮演的重要角色

在线方法, 定性方法, 旅游, 自反 性, 互联网人种学

Este artículo presenta una revisión sistemática de artículos de turismo que emplean métodos cualitativos en línea. Al centrarse en las revistas de turismo, este trabajo explora las creencias paradigmáticas, los enfoques metodológicos y los métodos que sustentan la investigación cualitativa en línea del turismo.

Esta revisión se realizó de manera sistemática siguiendo la lista de verificación de informes de los Elementos de informes preferidos para revisiones sistemáticas y metaanálisis por el Centro de Revisiones y Difusión.

En general, esta revisión sistemática indica que los estudiosos del turismo no expresan claramente las creencias ontológicas y epistemológicas que guían la investigación en línea. También muestra que los académicos del turismo no han explorado completamente la posibilidad de utilizar internet para formas de investigación más interactivas y participativas.

Esta revisión amplía la conciencia de los académicos del turismo sobre la gama de enfoques/métodos cualitativos disponibles al sugerir instrumentos de investigación adicionales que podrían reemplazar o complementar los tradicionales. Sin embargo, al seleccionar solo artículos de revistas indexadas, otras fuentes de publicaciones, como artículos publicados en revistas que no son Scopus y que no son de la Web-of-Science, libros, capítulos de libros y documentos de conferencias no se incluyeron en la revisión actual.

Este trabajo enfatiza el importante papel del ciberespacio para facilitar las interacciones virtuales entre investigadores y participantes en la co-construcción de material empírico cualitativo.

Métodos en línea, Métodos cualitativos, Turismo, Reflexividad, Netnografía

The growth of the Internet and other digital media has opened up exciting opportunities for the provision of public services, for business and for personal transactions. Comparisons between the earliest forms of “online” research, in the form of telephone interviewing, and offline data collection via face‐to‐face interviews or self‐completion questionnaires, revealed that the modality within which research was conducted could affect research findings. In examining the evidence, this paper indicates that the use of online methodologies has important implications for sampling, response rates, quality of data produced, and operational practices in research projects. Online research is restricted to individuals with access to relevant technologies (e.g. the Internet) and where online technology penetration is limited, survey samples are unlikely to represent the general population. Online surveys, however, can produce quicker response rates than offline surveys and also richer open‐ended responses. The important point is to recognise the strengths and weaknesses are associated with different methodologies and what differences can exist between online and offline data collection procedures.

This paper aims to highlight recent resources on information literacy (IL) and library instruction, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and IL published in 2015.

This paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain either unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and IL.

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed and critical look at the evolution of online survey research since Evans and Mathur’s (2005) article on the value of online surveys. At that time, online survey research was in its early stages. Also covered are the present and future states of online research. Many conclusions and recommendations are presented.

The look back focuses on online surveys, strengths and weaknesses of online surveys, the literature on several aspects of online surveys and online survey best practices. The look ahead focuses on emerging survey technologies and methodologies, and new non-survey technologies and methodologies. Conclusions and recommendations are provided.

Online survey research is used more frequently and better accepted by researchers than in 2005. Yet, survey techniques are still regularly transformed by new technologies. Non-survey digital research is also more prominent than in 2005 and can better track actual behavior than surveys can. Hybrid surveys will be widespread in the future.

The paper aims to provide insights for researchers with different levels of online survey experience. And both academics and practitioners should gain insights.

Adhering to a strong ethics code is vital to gain respondents’ trust and to produce valid results.

Conclusions and recommendations are offered in these specific areas: defining concepts, understanding the future role of surveys, developing and implementing surveys and a survey code of ethics. The literature review cites more than 200 sources.