‘The Perils of Netnography?’ I hear you ask? What perils are there? What perils aren’t there. After stumbling upon Joe Fernandez’s June 09 article, ‘The real-time thing’ in Marketing Week, earlier today, I felt compelled to highlight a few points of Netnographic research from my own academic experience.
In writing my draft dissertation a few months back I put together a roadmap of my methods to be used. Within this I described in detail how a large part of the methods would be devoted towards online interviews through IM client software. The benefits of this were obvious: more accurate recording of respondents’ views, reducing the chance of my mis-interpreting their comments, anonymity: whether the respondents chose to remain anonymous throughout or they just felt more comfortable writing rather than speaking in person, and flexibility: the interviews could happen at any time in any place without the need for time wasted travelling, easily being slotted into anyone’s busy diary/schedule.
And so the benefits abound do they not? No they don’t. Or they don’t at least if you don’t explain them carefully in full, covering your back. On further discussion with my supervisor of my draft, he was wholly mystified by my addition of IM interviews forming a core part of my research. It appeared that my proposed methodology was highly non traditional, involving the internet (a questionable subject for academics) and therefore highly suspect as a methodology. Apparently it would be invalid research as I would be automatically ignoring those respondents without access to the internet. Ah, that old chestnut.
What I had not explained in my research, it emerged, (what I thought obvious) was that, given the focus of my research was based on looking at reasonably tech savvy consumers with enough disposable income to debate what operating system to buy: Macs or PCs, ‘Netnography’ was therefore a ‘culturally relevant’ form of research methodology to adopt, and that more and more companies are now beginning to adopt Netnography methods. A mere one sentence on this would have saved me marks.
What’s clear is that although it may be catching up in the outside world, out there under piles of books and library dust abound a few academics still too suspicious to broach the internet, something still too new.
Vivo et disco – I live and I learn.