As an example, say if we want to understand consumers' viewpoints related to certain phenomenon, and we take and analyze their comments pertaining to that from their public social media posts. In addition, say, we do semi-structured interviews of employees of the firm to understand their perspective on the similar issues. Is it possible in such cases to mix these data sources and code them together to draw out common themes emerging out of these two diverse sources of data? If yes, please share few examples.
Yes you cwn. It is called methodological triangulation, and multi method design. This is often more used in qualitative case study research. What you need to keep in mind is the order of your studies, if one informs the other, or if you are conducting them independetly. Also, the point where you triangulate and analyse your data together must be made transparent. Morse is a good reference to this. Mixed method design. You need a qual-qual design, and deside if its a sequentially or simultaniuous approach. You can se example of a triangulation of two qualitative methods in my work:https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2675498
And: https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-020-02689-8
Netnograpy is a method whereas semi-structured 'nature' of the questionnaire is the technique. I think you wanted to know whether netnograpy and interview can be incorporated in the same study. The answer is yes. Incorporation of multiple methods in a study enables in deriving data in ways that would contribute in the refine knowledge production that sometimes is limited by the adoption of one method. However in both the cases you need to justify the rationale behind the methods adopted for the study.
Using more than one research tool improves the reliability of your study, especially in qualitative research. But there needs to be congruence between the parts of your research, and a rationale why these particular research tools and research participants were chosen.
Following Lincoln & Guba (1985), most uses of triangulation in qualitative research treat it as a technique for increasing rigor, so that a result is more "trustworthy" if it has been located with two different methods. But in this case, I do not think that is your motivation for collecting data from two different sources.
Instead, this seems to be a case of multi-method research where each method serves a separate purpose.
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