Interviews

In this first phase of research, information from both administrators and moderators was sought regarding their thoughts on content manipulation on Reddit in order to address the objectives presented inSection 3.2.1.

As discussed inSection 3.2.4, interviews are an appropriate method of gathering data when the one’s approach to the research is an interpretivist one. Interviews require their participants to reflect on their experience and provide their interpretation as part of the context of the data they provide. Interviews were also selected as the method of choice for this research due to their ability to deeply examine real-world behaviour in natural settings (Drever 1995), and to collect detailed information that would be otherwise challenging to gather. Interviews allow users to reflect and consider what they are talking about, which is a feature not captured by other means of data collection such as questionnaires (Lazar, Feng and

Hochheiser 2010).

Interviews have their drawbacks; the amount of time needed to mean- ingfully conduct an interview with a single subject and to transcribe that data is significant. However, if unbounded conversations can be managed, interviews provide a great deal of flexilibility for the researcher (Robson

2002,Lazar et al. 2010).

Interviews are frequently combined with other techniques for collect- ing data, as this helps the researcher determine the relationship between behaviours and perceptions (Crabtree and Miller 1999). This was done during the research discussed in this thesis; the interviews conducted dur- ing Phase 1 of the research, discussed in this chapter, was reinforced by the web-based data collection conducted in Phase 2 (discussed inChapter 4), the data from which was in turn further explored by more interviews in

3.3. DATA COLLECTION: ADMINISTRATOR INTERVIEWS

Phase 3 (discussed inChapter 5).

The interviews with administrators were conducted in asemi-structured fashion. In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer does not have a fixed set of questions, to which he or she writes down the answer for each question asked; rather, the interview is defined as a set of pre-definedfocus areas, in which the interviewer is free to ask relevant questions (Drever

1995).

A thematic approach was used in the analysis of both the interviews and the community guidelines. The thematic approach for this analysis takes significant inspiration from the techniques used in grounded theory

(Braun and Clarke 2006), which is suited for the analysis of early com-

ponents of work without the researcher having to commit themselves to using the entire suite of methods and frameworks involved in grounded theory, as described byCorbin and Strauss(1990).

In this study, the transcripts of the conducted interviews were analysed concurrently with the text of the community guidelines. Because both sources of data applied to the same topic, both sets of data were able to be analysed side-by-side. This was found to assist in the analysis of both, in that themes that existed in one were found to exist in the other, which served to validate their inclusion in the final analysis.

3.3.1.1 Semi-structured interviews

Semi-structured interviews are powerful and flexible tools for data collec- tion in cases where specific questions that need asking may not be known until part-way through the interview. Drever (1995) notes that this form of interviewing combines the flexibility of discussion, with the option for rigidity when it is needed: an interviewer is free to explore a focus area with the subject as far as is useful, and is able to move to other areas when

3.3. DATA COLLECTION: ADMINISTRATOR INTERVIEWS

necessary. While conducting these interviews, the author found that this observation to accurate: conversations remained usefully on-topic, while still allowing for flexibility and exploration of related issues.

Human-computer interaction is a field in which semi-structured in- terviews have been used regularly (Robson 2002); as Kjeldskov and Gra- ham(2003) note, questionnaires and interviews are “respected and widely used instruments” for the collection of data in this area. Interviews, like other survey-based research techniques, are useful in gathering informa- tion about user experience; given that the topic of this research is about the experience of users with regards to content manipulation, interviews are a particularly appropriate data-gathering tool.

Consequently, semi-structured interviews were selected for the first component of the data collection confudcted in this phase of the research as they simultaneously allow for great flexibility in data gathering, as well as rigidity when needed (Drever 1995). The use of semi-structured interviews is well-established in qualitative research (Robson 2002), and has proven useful in the study of online communities (Konstan and Chen

2007).

Semi-structured interviews were appropriate for this phase of the re- search in particular because of the fact that they permit the interviewer to explore aspects of the area under discussion in directions that are not known at the time that the interview questions are devised. This was par- ticularly useful in the case of this study, as they allowed for an exploration of a topic whose definition was in the process of being understood.

AsLouise Barriball and While(1994) notes, semi-structured interviews

allow for a close examination of people and their working situations; as social media site moderation can be considered a form of (largely volun- teer) ‘work’; additionally, semi-structured interviews are an extremely so-

3.3. DATA COLLECTION: ADMINISTRATOR INTERVIEWS

cial form of gathering data (Robson 2002), which makes them appropriate for gathering information about an especially social field of study.