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8 - Archives of Everyday Life

Using Blogs in Qualitative Research

from Part II - Media Data Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2017

By
Nicholas Hookway
Edited by
Virginia Braun ,
Victoria Clarke  and
Debra Gray
Virginia Braun
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Victoria Clarke
Affiliation:
University of the West of England, Bristol
Debra Gray
Affiliation:
University of Winchester
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Type
Chapter
Information
Collecting Qualitative Data
A Practical Guide to Textual, Media and Virtual Techniques
 , pp. 144 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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References

Further Resources: Online

The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) has a useful website where researchers can subscribe to a free, open-access mailing list, download papers from the association’s annual conference, and access the AoIR Guide on Ethical Online Research: http://aoir.org

The Blog Analysis Toolkit is the University of Pittsburgh’s Qualitative Data Analysis Program – a free online system for researchers to capture, archive and share blog posts: www.ibridgenetwork.org/university-of-pittsburgh/blog-analysis-toolkit

The web resource ReStore provides online training resources for researchers. The section ‘resources for learners’ (www.restore.ac.uk/orm/learnerresources/) is particularly valuable, providing overviews of key journals and texts in the field of online research, a glossary, links, FAQs and bibliographies on online research methods, including blogs (see Bibliography section ‘online methodological futures’: www.restore.ac.uk/orm/learnerresources/bibliography.htm): Madge, C., O’Connor, H. and Shaw, R. (2006). Exploring online research methods in a virtual training environment: www.restore.ac.uk/orm/

Further Resources: Readings

For an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of using blogs in social scientific research, particularly as a strategy to access accounts of everyday life, see Hookway, N. (2008). ‘Entering the blogosphere’: Some strategies for using blogs in social research. Qualitative Research, 8(1), 91–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
For an excellent overview of the opportunities and challenges blogs offer researchers in the context of a sociological study on young people’s gap year narratives, see Snee, H. (2012). Youth research in Web 2.0: A case study in blog analysis. In Heath, S. and Walker, C. (eds.), Innovations in youth research (pp. 178–194). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The following two articles are from my everyday moralities project, and provide insight into how blog data can be used and presented within a qualitative research project: Hookway, N. (2014). Tasting the ethical: Vegetarianism as modern re-enchantment. M/C: Journal of Media and Culture, 17(1). Retrieved from: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/759.Google Scholar
Hookway, N. (2015). Living authentic: ‘Being true to yourself’ as a contemporary moral ideal. M/C: Journal of Media and Culture, 18(1). Retrieved from: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/759.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
For an overview of how researchers might use blogs as a reflexive writing tool in the research process, see Wakeford, N. and Cohen, K. (2005). Fieldnotes in public: Using blogs for research. In Fielding, N., Lee, R. M. and Blank, G. (eds.), The SAGE handbook of online research methods (pp. 307–326). London: Sage Publications. (NB The chapter does not consider blogs as a source of data, but does offer an accessible introduction to blogs, relevant literatures and their social and cultural context.)Google Scholar

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