Formal Data Analysis Techniques

The nature of the research design meant the anticipated data analysis techniques were just that—anticipated. It was possible other methods would be deemed necessary or even that planned analysis would be altered. Based on the research questions I thought quantitative and qualitative content analysis would be used, as well as bibliometric methods, and descriptive statistics, and digital ethnography.

2.8.1 Digital ethnography

Hine (2015) considers the role of ethnography when studying the Internet and mediated communication and how it challenges basic assumptions, such as

When we watch a fight break out on Twitter we cannot be sure whether any of the followers of those involved are seeing the same fight, at the same time, and

understanding it in the same way that we do. The very notion of a singular “situation” as

a pre-existing object breaks down (p. 3).

Ethnographers strive to observe and do what those they study are doing, in many ways I was

observing and doing what Mama Natural’s followers do. I could only see the interactions they

chose to publish, but reading the blog without leaving a public comment, “lurking,” is an

extremely common behavior. Like a case study, an ethnographic study cannot be wholly

premeditated (Hine, 2015). Hine’s (2015) view of the Internet as “an infrastructure that

underpins the things that people do, rather than a foregrounded activity that they do in its own

right” (p. 8) is a helpful frame for looking at Mama Natural. The Internet is the infrastructure that has allowed her to store years of the “mundane aspects of everyday existence” (Hine,

2015, p. 164) that I think shape the phenomenon of interest but that would be difficult to obtain in other forms of data collection.

This work was also driven by “a belief that engagement with the field should be driven

by a pursuit of the ways in which a setting uniquely makes sense, rather than the application of

a particular model of what a field should be” (Hine, 2015, p. 31). As case studies must

triangulate evidence, “Ethnographers need to triangulate their own perceptions with those of

typical ethnographic “learning-by-doing, observation, recording activities and archiving

documents” (Hine, 2015, p. 15) and “the embodied experiences of the researcher [will be] one

of its primary means of discovery” (p. 19).

However, the primary methodological approach was still the case study. While I do not

“aspire to develop depersonalized and standardized instruments of data collection” (Hine,

2015, p. 19), the data were collected in a systematic, standardized way that could be replicated by another researcher following the same protocol. Though our findings would differ, the data we collected, for the most part, should match. Like an ethnographer, I did not make an

“objective account independent of the specificities of a particular ethnographer’s engagement

with the setting” (Hine, 2015, p. 20), if only because such an account is, when examining such a

contested topic, impossible.

Unobtrusive digital ethnographic methods were embedded within this research design.

Hine (2015) does “not claim that unobtrusive methods applied to online settings are necessarily

in themselves sufficient to enable a robust ethnographic account to be constructed” (p. 157) but “for an ethnographer interested in those aspects of the minutiae of everyday life which

participants may find it difficult to talk about retrospectively in an interview situation” (p. 157)

they can be illuminating. These methods were essential to my work and also underlined the rationale for avoiding face-to-face data collection because “non-reactive research methods are very useful where it may be difficult for respondents to give honest or authentic answers about

their behavior, possibly because answers might be seen as socially undesirable” (Hine, 2015, p

159). Asking a parent why they have not vaccinated their child, or anything about possible vaccine opposition almost always puts them in a defensive position—particularly when the

person questioning them is associated with the scientific community. Mama Natural’s site and

content are “a form of data that can readily be collected and interpreting it as a proxy for a

behavior that the researcher is interested in but cannot necessarily ask about or observe

directly” (Hine, 2015, p159).

2.8.2 Qualitative content analysis: Inductive coding analytic memo writing

I utilized certain grounded theory methods as articulated by Charmaz, particularly

inductive coding and analytic memo writing. Coding is a place to “define what is happening in

the data and begin to grapple with what it means” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 113). Grounded theory

coding typically involves multiple rounds, an initial broad phase and then a focused selective phase (Charmaz, 2014, p. 113). Via memo-writing I accessed the “implicit, unstated, and

condensed meanings” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 180). These codes and memos were distilled into

themes, “outcome[s] of coding, categorization, or analytic reflection, not something that is, in

itself, coded” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 14).

2.8.3 Quantitative content analysis

Quantitative content analysis “applies preconceived categories or codes to the data”

(Charmaz, p. 114). In assessing family resemblances, I utilized quantitative content analysis. The Mama Natural site exists within a network of mommy blogs that advocate natural living. Just the blog page advertising her book features endorsements from 13 other authors or digital creators (“The Mama Natural Week by Week Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth | Mama

Natural,” 2017). A cursory look at their descriptions and web presences reveals some obvious

information sources identified in my third research question, such as the book, Nourishing Traditions. The creators of some of Mama Natural’s favorite artifacts, other blogs she appears

on, or individuals she regularly cites, could have been included in this assessment, but

ultimately were not because they were seen as experts she admired, rather than peers. Other individuals were identified by looking at who Mama Natural follows and interacts with on her social media accounts, particularly YouTube. To ensure a robust comparison, I aimed for a minimum of 30 individuals, though I was able to obtain over 80 cases to contrast.

2.8.4 Metrics, impact, story

The website RetractionWatch, a blog devoted to “tracking retractions as a window into

the scientific process” reported a surprising story—the top ten most cited retracted articles had

continued to be cited after they been retracted and some had received more citations since retraction than before (Oransky, 2015). This list included the infamous article by Wakefield et al. which alluded to a causal link between the MMR vaccine and Autism Spectrum Disorder. In my previous study of Mama Natural, I noticed she engages with information sources of all types

—scholarly, government, informal, et cetera. It is possible that some of the information she uses is a special case, such as the Wakefield article, but without examining the metrical aspect of such information it would be impossible to know. Thus, when possible, I intended to tell the bibliometric story of the information object’s influence.

While for some this was as easy as retrieving its information in the major bibliometric sources (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar) and checking the Altmetric plug-in, for others it was a decidedly more complex task. The citations for popular materials are not tracked, and

stating the influence of a blog or a specific newspaper article is a nebulous task. However, that does not mean it is not worth attempting. Many researchers who study online spaces state the

space’s impact via Alexa ratings. Flaherty et al.’s (2014) work about the Jenny McCarthy effect

noted how many libraries the controversial book was available in via WorldCat. Sometimes the influence of an information object can be discerned in ways other than measurement. For example, the Dr. Sears Vaccine book inspired Offit and Moser (2009) to write an article specifically addressing it and many of its claims. I had intended to devote more time to analyzing the information objects cited, but because of the difficulties in understanding their influence, the amount of cited objects, and the relatively low importance Genevieve placed on them, I did not pursue this line of inquiry.