My Grounded Theory Data Collection and Analysis

 

         During this stage of the course, we review chapter 9, where Charmaz (2014) explains theories in more detail. Charmaz (2014) explained how theories are really just developed in order to answer questions (p. 227). This basic logic helped me think about what questions I was really asking in terms of my research on why people use social media to access news and information. I really want to know why people choose to use social media to access news and information. I have some initial theories that it is because of convenience, efficient, cost-effective, and basically instant access to any news topics. Some people even get alerts for news updates on their smartphones. What I needed to do was figure out what data I could collect that would help support this theory or answer my question.

Using Stebbins’ (2001) framework and methods, I did some exploration, starting with Twitter. I skimmed other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, but it felt like Twitter made the most sense to collect data because of the search tool as well as the nature of tweets. Tweets are usually related to opinions and thoughts whereas Facebook and Instagram seem to have more personal elements to them like photos. Many people make their Facebook and Instagram profiles private so that only friends and family can see what they post, which would make it difficult to search all of the content. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, so it felt like that would be more manageable to transcribe and code. I also thought the content of a tweet might be more direct, unlike a Facebook post that could be lengthy and cover multiple points. And while many news media companies have Facebook and Instagram accounts, I still doubted that I would be able to find out why people use social media to access news. Twitter seems to be more news related or a least more centered on recent hot topics than other social media platforms.

I was still concerned that I wouldn’t actually find enough data on social media that related to using social media to access news and information, but I was determined not to have to go through the red tape of the ethics process. I also realized I had started to fall back into my quantitative research ways of wanting to count likes and shares, when really the content I need to analyze is the comments which are narrative. The volume or frequency of likes and shares will only tell me that people are using social media, but it will not tell me why. Charmaz (2014) stated “grounded theory methods consist of systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories from data themselves” (p. 1). If I am going to stick to true grounded theory methods, I need to examine qualitative data not quantitative. In order to understand why people are choosing to use social media to access news, I need to read and analyze the words of the tweets and possibly related comments.

Using the search tool within Twitter, I entered the term ‘social media to access news’. To my relief, hundreds of results came up that were fairly recent (within the last year). Some of the tweets were related to topics that I initially hadn’t thought about studying such as the war in Ukraine and real versus fake news. However, the more I went through the tweets, it made sense as these were related to my research project. Some of the tweets related to the war in Ukraine were related to the notion that users could see what was happening in Ukraine almost instantly. The tweets related to news on social media being fake or real were also relevant to my topic because it could be a deterrent in accessing news through social media or a reason why people choose to access news through social media. The rationale for using or not using social media to access news is within the narrative tweets and needed to be analyzed.

I ended up transcribing thirty-five of the relevant tweets into a word document so I could begin to code them easily. I was hoping that thirty-five tweets would be enough data to either support a theory or prove it incorrect. After transcribing all of the tweets, I started to review them in more detail and jot down categories or terms for coding. Just when I thought I had determined all of the categories, I would read another tweet and come up with another one. Essentially, I had to read through all the tweets before confirming a set of categories that I could use to code each tweet. Once I had everything coded, I needed to figure out how to go about analyzing everything.

An issue that arose after I completed the transcribing and coding of the data, was the impact on my theory. At this point I am not sure whether I have to finalize my theory or still be open-minded to changes? Once I start analyzing the data, could it still change my theory or my research question? I think I am struggling with determining an end point of the theorizing process and actually finalizing it. I think using grounded theory methods is helpful for qualitative research is beneficial because it is so adaptable and flexible. However, the downside to that is it also feels like I could continue with this research forever. My end point can be when I am not really discovering any new or different data, which is the point I’m at now. However, I would imagine with some grounded theory research projects it may be difficult to determine an end point and finalize everything. There may be some topics that seem like there is an endless amount of data that can be collected that is constantly changing and that might be challenging to manage.

In order to further understand the data available, and research that has previously been completed, I started to do a review of current literature related to social media and accessing news. I discovered a lot of research related to validity of news, or fake versus real news as this has certainly been a hot topic over the last few years. There was also a lot of literature related to social media addiction and online dependency. After some digging, I was able to find several very helpful articles related to using news to access social media. Another aspect discovered in the literature review was regarding what content was shared, how often was it shared, and what topics were shared in comparison to traditional news outlets.

Now that all the data is collected and coded, I have started the analysis process. I was concerned about whether I had coded properly as that seems like it is the logical step to complete first. I realized that as I was coding, I was also analyzing because I did have to modify the categories as I read additional tweets. The challenge at this point in the research journey is to make sure I do not continue to fall back to my quantitative methods. I always want to count or calculate a rate or percentage, but what I really need to do is see the overall themes of what stories are being told within the tweets. It is too easy to perform quantitative analysis because it is what I am used to, but I need to get used to being comfortable with qualitative analysis. Being comfortable with something will only come with practice.

At this point, I am excited to start putting everything together and write up the details. I have my memos that I have written to try to keep track of the journey and I am hoping to pull some information from there as well, so I do not forget anything. I feel like I have my answer to why people use social media to access news and it is not really different from what I initially theorized. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not but it is where the exploration process brought me. Additionally, the tweets did reveal some additional topics related to accessing news on social media like ability to make current events feel more real as well as the topic of real versus fake news. These were not items that I was initially planning on addressing in my research, but now I cannot ignore them as they were extremely prevalent throughout the data. These additions make me feel like I am following a true grounded theory method for my research.

References

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. (2^nd ed.). Sage.

Stebbins, R.A. (2001). Exploratory research in the social sciences. Sage.