Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection occurred in two phases which required two netnographic methods. At first, a participant-observational method was used to collect data mainly from projects published by members from Instructables who have agreed to take part in the online interviews. There are some other members who also agreed for their published projects to be used in the study though those members were not able to take part in online interviews mainly for time restrictions (e.g. full time employees, time difference between UK and other countries), Then, online in-depth interviews were conducted with those participants recruited from the community.

In the first phase of data collection, an archival and observational approach to netnographic enquiry was employed to collect multiple sources of online data in line with Kozinets (2010) and Healy and Beverland (2013). This phase of data collection included community conversations and a degree of researcher participation with community members and administrators of the community. A sample of popular Instructables projects was collected,

109 systematically archived and observed. A ‘project’ is a term used in the community to refer to the description of the steps required to make products (i.e. goods) by a member of the community. ‘Popularity’ refers to projects which generate many conversations among members. On this basis, a purposive sample of popular projects was used, in line with interest in consumer-to-consumer interactions.

Sixty-six projects documented by sixty-four members were archived, including relevant members’ profiles, as well as related comments added by other members. As Healy and Beverland (2013, p.230) suggest, interpretive depth was sought by going beyond “the immediate transcription of single posts” and by analysing members’ “forum history and constructing archives of their posted communications”, which “helped to weigh the plausibility of informant discussion”. This made it possible “to gain the same level of depth as a one-hour interview, historic text-based analysis of archival sources, or daily participation of a physical world ethnographic study (Gatson, 2011)” and also helped to recognise posts which were richer in meaning (Healy and Beverland, 2013, p.230).

Member (pseudonym)

Country Gender Age Status Education Number of

110 Member

(pseudonym)

Country Gender Age Status Education Number of

111 Member

(pseudonym)

Country Gender Age Status Education Number of

Table 1 Profiles of Participants in the Interviews from Instructables.

112 Richards (2005) stresses that a researcher needs to familiarise himself/herself with a qualitative data analysis package even before starting the process of data collection or becoming overwhelmed by data. He states that a good software in a qualitative research can function not only as a tool to manage data records but also as a tool to integrate all aspects of a research project from design, to reading, to field data collection, and reporting.

Particularly, it is advised that large scale investigations that deal with substantial amounts of relevant data may utilise computer-assisted software such as existing Microsoft Office or specialized programs such as NVivo and Atlas.ti. So, the projects dataset was captured using NVivo and its content was saved and organised as PDF files. This process generated approximately 850 PDF pages including texts and photographs uploaded by members;

grammar and style have not been edited by the researcher.

In the second stage of data collection, questions for online in-depth interviews were developed using the insights and understanding gained from the literature as well as findings from data analysis in the first stage of the project. (see interview schedule in the appendices). As progress was being made with the netnographic analysis of content during the first participant observational stage, key observations were used to provide insights into the structure of the online interview schedule.

There were many methodological challenges during data collection, both within netnographic observations as well as the online interviewing. The process was relatively extensive considering that recruitment messages were sent on an individual basis with some customization required for names, or method of contacts (e.g. private messaging, e-mails, and personal blogs). Also, response messages were written to address requests for more information from some members.

113 In this first round of recruitment, an initial standard message was used to recruit potential participants for the interviews. This message was kept as short as possible with brief information to stimulate members to participate in the interviews. The message provided basic information including my name, university requirement and research interests/objectives in plain language. The message also combined consent for the use of members’ projects with their willingness to take part in a Skype voice interview. The recruitment invitation was concluded with a statement of potential contribution as a rewarding experience to members who might be willing to take part in the interviews. After the exclusion of those who did not meet the selection criteria (e.g. age under 18, non-English speakers, …etc.), about 15 messages were emailed to members who met the selection and sampling criteria suggested above. This involved checking out each member profile and looking for information such as age, spoken language and number of projects.

Data analysis is often described as a consequential procedure to data collection in research.

In netnographic research, however, Data analysis occurred in parallel with data collection as outlined by Kozinets (2010). Data analysis is an iterative process through ongoing comparing and contrasting similarities and differences of data elements. Therefore, the data collected from the Instructables was analysed through a hermeneutical process of interpretation (Thompson, 1997). This hermeneutical process was employed to understand the act of prosumption as experienced by members in the community. The hermeneutical framework of interpretation involves retracing back and forth among the set of data, the conversations, and the literatures including individual and collective posts. It offers the researcher the opportunity to interpret consumers’ consumption experiences as they relate to their everyday lives, self-construction, and meaning they associate with their life-story (Thompson, 1997). Moreover, this interpretive framework is considered appropriate for a

114 deeper understanding of the experience of online prosumers because, as Thompson (1997, p.440) states, “[this framework] relevant to the phenomenological aspects of the person/culture relationship”. Therefore, it allows a netnographic researcher to explore the meanings and experiences of participants (Spiggle, 1994).

Data were initially coded by themes following a template analysis approach, which allows for the creation of a hierarchy of pre-defined codes using broad categories derived from the literature and/or data sets (King, 2005). This initial stage of coding helped to develop a deeper understanding of the community, as well as the usefulness of the data in light of the research objectives. This was followed by a second stage of coding and recoding. Similarly, photographic data with frequent and multiple inferences were analysed through induction, coding and recoding according to a pre-defined but flexible template. Photographs were then categorised as a whole as well as in sections, according to the pre-defined hierarchal coding system. In this way, photographs were regarded as data with many possible meanings (Prosser and Schwartz, 1998). They were used as evidence to illustrate the netnographic field notes, similar to the use of written quotations.