Hello Prof,

What an interesting question; these papers might be of interest:

Hookway, N. (2008). Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research. Qualitative research, 8(1), 91-113.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249731241

Wilson, E., Kenny, A., & Dickson-Swift, V. (2015). Using blogs as a qualitative health research tool: a scoping review. International journal of qualitative methods, 14(5), 1609406915618049.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286637295

Kurtz, L. C., Trainer, S., Beresford, M., Wutich, A., & Brewis, A. (2017). Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts: Methodological and Ethical Challenges in Qualitative Online Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), 1609406917705796.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316555118

I haven't seen the full text of this:

Li, D., & Walejko, G. (2008). Splogs and abandoned blogs: The perils of sampling bloggers and their blogs. Information, Community and Society, 11(2), 279-296.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691180801947976

Very best wishes,

Mary

Article 'Entering the blogosphere': Some strategies for using blogs ...

Article Using Blogs as a Qualitative Health Research Tool: A Scoping Review

Article Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts: Methodological and Ethi...

Dear Mary Wilson, thank you very much for the literature you share. They will be of great help.  

Hi, Mustafa,

Grounded theory contains within itself a form of self-validation that will potentially enrich your study. Regardless of the data collection approach - interviews, blogs, focus groups - the researcher continues to collect data until he/she is finding nothing new from respondents. One knows that it is time to discontinue data collection and begin the recursive analysis in grounded theory when this level of "saturation" is reached.

Triangulation, of course, is a basic necessity in any qualitative approach. I would strongly recommend that you consider researcher inter-rater reliability and member checking with a few key informants once you have developed themes from your data set.

Dear Peter Kindle, thank you very much for your reply. As far as I understand, we should start analyzing the data as soon as we collect the very first bits of them, so that we can see the variety and scope of our results. Otherwise, how can we be aware that we have reached saturation? I would also kindly ask you if you could shortly explain how relevant is the use of "inter-rater reliablity" in qualitative researches.

A lot depends on your research question(s) and the theoretical framework of 'professional identity' behind the study. Anyway, it is always better to have triangulation for the qualitative research

trianguliation of

1. instruments : observation, interview, doc. file

2. respondent/subject: main subject, environtment, other sorces related to main subject.

Dear Markus DELI Girik Allo, thank you for your answer. But I am not sure I clearly understand what you mean. Would you be kindly explain your remarks?

Dear Mustafa Volkan,

What an interesting question. I do agree it depens on which kind of data you scrap or download and on your theoretical framework. Anyway, I would wonder why do we rely so much on face-to-face data or paper-published data (newspapers, journals, etc.) and no on online data (blogs and so on). I think you should apply most of the traditional and classic methodological procedures and concerns in order to get the most of your data.

I do recommend you a few "classic papers":

· Sade-Beck, L. (2004) “Internet ethnography: Online and offline”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(2). Article 4.

· Beaulieu, A. (2004) “Mediating Ethnography: Objectivity and the Making of Ethnographies of the Internet”, Social Epistemology, Vol. 18, No. 2–3, pp. 139–163.

· N. James y H. Busher (2006) “Credibility, authenticity and voice: dilemmas in online interviewing”, Qualitative Research, vol. 6(3), pp. 403–420.

Best, Igor.

Dear Igor Sadaba, thank you very much for the literature you shared. I believe they will be of great help.

Mustafa Volkan Kavas: This is provided by a colleague on our site.

Prashant Kulkarni 7.93 · KEM Hospital Research Centre What is triangulation of data in qualitative research? Is it a method of validating the information collected through various methods? Triangulation means using more than one method to collect data on the same topic. This is a way of assuring the validity of research through the use of a variety of methods to collect data on the same topic, which involves different types of samples as well as methods of data collection. However, the purpose of triangulation is not necessarily to cross-validate data but rather to capture different dimensions of the same phenomenon.

Dear Mary-Helen Castanuela, thank you for elaborating the aim of using triangulation.

You are most welcome.

Of course the originators of the ethnographic options did not anticipate web blogs. We all know that historically ethnography was devised for use among non-literate groups. It also used to be expected that it would be employed in generating holistic data in an idiographic study that may not usually lead to nomothetic conclusions. I have said all this not to query the possibilities in the innovative approach that you propose, but actually to commend the strategy as an imaginative adaptation of this option to a new technology in a changed social setting. You are not likely to find many researchers who have already used qua ethnography in this form. You are about to do something novel, and I encourage you. You may end up creating a niche which will extend the possibilities of this tool.

Dear Peter-Jazzy Ezeh, thank you for your encouraging reply. It seems that it will be challenging.

What is a pace-making study if not challenging? If you succeed, you will have broken a new ground, and I doubt you will ever be forgotten.

I suggest you check out what Anthropology network has on this. Not for any wonderful literature resource as such but some other forms of application of "new technology" in ethnographic study. The discussions of all on the process and progress may be helpful.

Dear Godwin Chukwumezie, thank you for your advice. Do you have any spesific network in your mind that I can communicate with?

The Anthropology network in LinkedIn is here recommended. Connect to it.

It is not simply reliable. Ethnographic research is based on direct observation, and web blogs are a very indirect and representational form of cultural interaction. They are usually based on an exchange process of gift-giving / gift-receiving: if you don't give or reciprocate in web exchanges, you will disappear quickly. You can research the ethnography of web blogs but not the reverse.