I'm doing a research on alienation among digital natives on social media, and I was wondering if I can draw from (1) my experiences through autoethnography and (2) the experiences of others through phenomenology [in-depth interviews] to advance my research.
I think your can. In qualitative methodology, you still have logical research questions, and therefore you need data collection and analysis methods for each question.
If one question is about the researcher/participant's experiences, than auto-ethnography works. Show that you kept some sort of journal or other records you can analyse. Maybe you go back and analyse your own social media posts over a given time-frame. This is better than simply saying "here is what I think."
Of course you can. In both quamitarive and quantitative research we emoloy different methodologies to obtain more quality results.
Combining methods is possible and in many cases desirable, but it is necessary to make a careful research design and take precautions to avoid incompatibilities. Some related topics are triangulation, multimethodology and mixed methods.
You could read, for example: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.885.1466&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/bes/tsrm-mixed-methods
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_triangulation_of_data_in_qualitative_research_Is_it_a_method_of_validating_the_information_collected_through_various_methods
You may also be interested in two articles from Wikipedia, which is often considered an unreliable source of information, but which, when used with care, usually provides interesting data, especially for the first contacts with a subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimethodology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_(social_science)
The following paper/link (see Sebastian Shaw’s comments) may further help:
- Starr, L. J. (2014) Informing Education Research and the Praxis of Leadership through the use of Autoethnography and Phenomenology, Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education, 5, 3, pp. 71-81.
- What is the difference between autoethnography and phenomenology?: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_autoethnography_and_phenomenology
But is phenomenology a research method? Or is it actually an approach that can be undertaken using a variety of methods, including autoethnographic techniques.
I think in this inquiry, phenomenological approach is taken to research the phenomenon of “alienation”. Using social media is one of many of the instances that can cause alienation. Auto-ethnography can be supported with in-depth interviews, participant observation and even action-based research if the social media platform creates leeway for offline/online interactions. Good luck:)
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