Abstract
In an increasingly digital era, social media channels have played a huge role in shaping the production, circulation, and consumption of data. In a rich and ever-changing digital landscape, researchers are compelled to find and apply novel methods to identify and analyze social media data. Qualitative research using social media by Gwen Bouvier and Joel Rasmussen is a valuable and comprehensive resource for researchers, scholars, and students who are invested in deploying a range of qualitative methods to capture and analyze data produced and embedded in a wide range of social media channels.
The book consists of nine chapters, and showcases a number of innovative ways of approaching, collecting, and analyzing social media data. Although each chapter presents well-organized, practical, and critical discussions, a standout chapter is Chapter 4, which discusses how online narratives are identified and analyzed through critical discourse analysis (CDA). Here, Bouvier and Rasmussen underline how CDA enables a critical exploration of “how language plays a role in the functioning of society” (p. 59). Furthermore, the authors pay special attention to how language in social media operates as a critical starting point for an inquiry into the possibilities and politics of representation. For example, claiming that “we cannot plan and make sense of things without language” (p. 59), they highlight how a close examination of language choice and usage through CDA exposes who is represented in social media.
Another salient offering of the book is a clear and incisive presentation of research steps for designing and deploying qualitative methods to examine social media data. Bouvier and Rasmussen illustrate the processes of crafting research questions, collecting and analyzing qualitative materials, mapping ethical considerations, and presenting results. They apply these research steps to collect and investigate data from a range of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter (now X), TikTok, YouTube, Weibo, and Instagram. Furthermore, they emphasize how specific research procedures vary, owing to the application of qualitative methods in a range of contexts.
A commendable feature of Qualitative research using social media is its insightful articulation of how “shared and individual life in our societies is the result of an interplay of activities online and offline” (p. 172). Across the chapters, the authors underscore the deep interlinking of offline and online worlds and how this intertwining shapes the production of social media data. This approach complements methodological approaches that chart and analyze the implications of interconnected physical and digital domains in people’s everyday mediated lives (Hine, 2015; Pink et al., 2016). Additionally, they encourage researchers to dive deeply into the role of sociocultural factors in mediating data production and consumption, an approach crucial for collecting and analyzing embodied, situated, and nuanced data.
Overall, this book provides a clear and comprehensive guide on a range of qualitative methods to collect and examine personal and networked data across social media channels. Interdisciplinary researchers whose works are situated in the field of media and communication, sociology, and anthropology will learn considerably from the book’s step-by-step presentation on applying qualitative methods in social media research. Indeed, this book is a great contribution to a growing body of work that inquires into and foregrounds the importance of qualitative methods in critically researching social media data, as produced and consumed through the fusion of physical and virtual worlds.