Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Journal :“Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”. Impact factor: 2.067.

Paper “Dialectic Tensions of Information Quality: Social

Networking Sites and Hiring?”, written by Jacqueline C. Pike, Patrick J. Bateman and Brian Butler.

Paper examines the quality of information that is obtained via social networking sites during the hiring process which is a very challenging process because of the lack of quality in information prevents the discovery of truth about the candidates. Qualitative method of semi structured interviewing with hiring personnel were made for the research. According to the information quality literature, information quality is a multidimensional construct. As there is not an unanimous agreement on exact dimensions, there is a consensus that it has four dimension which are Accessibility IQ, Contextual IQ, Intrinsic IQ and Representational IQ. Qualitative interview data were collected and grouped by researchers which emerged the poles according to the tensions between these dimensions. Finally paper concludes that quality issue is a very complex subject because of these tensions and understanding these tensions is important and necessary to explain the nature of perceptions of social networking sites' information quality during recruitment process.

Semi structured interviewing method was used in the paper. It is a practical and efficient way of gathering detailed data which can not be easily gathered by observing. In my opinion the main advantage of this method is it provides detailed information as in those interviews participants are able to talk in depth with the little direction from the interviewer. Those little directions enable interviewer to collect the required data in detail. Moreover it gives chance to interviewer to ask spontaneous questions besides predefined questions. Whereas semi structured interviewing is expensive and time consuming. Moreover as few predefined questions are used, respondents may be asked different questions. Parallel to this it can be said that it is not totally but somehow dependent to the interviewer. Moreover answers do not enable researchers to make generalizations.

What I learned about qualitative methods by reading this paper is that it allows researchers to collect detailed data to be examined. In my opinion with an experienced interviewer's directions semi structured interviewing might provide very useful, in depth information which would be very beneficial for the research.

The conclusion that the paper put out is I think very open ended. I think not deriving more precise conclusion would be the main methodological problem about this paper. I think they could have directed the participants to give more detailed answers to enable them to drew more certain conclusion at the end.

Case study is study of a specific situation, person, event, social group or a specific “case”. It is a research strategy that focuses on understanding the dynamics present. Case study can either focus on single or multiple cases. Basically case studies combine data collection method such as archives, interviews, observations. They can be used to accomplish numerous aims such as providing description, testing or generating theory. (Eisenhardt, 1989)

Paper “The Presence of Hyperlinks on Social Network Sites: A Case Study of Cyworld in Korea”, written by Steven Sams and Ham Woo Park.

The research was conducted to determine the extent to which hyperlinks appear within user-submitted comments on Korean social network service Cyworld.(Hams, Park 2013). A software tool were developed to investigate comments that were made to the 130 Korean National Assembly Members' social network profile. As a result researchers found out that hyperlinks are solely targeted to Korean services, males are more likely to comment on political profile pages, profile pages of ruling politicians were found to be more prominent than opposition parties' politicians and Message Amplification and Network Building were found to be the two main reasons for submitting links. In my opinion paper defines the research questions and the aim of the study clearly which is to examine the comments on politicians network profile to point out to which purpose people comment hyperlinks, who post comments mostly women or man, which politician group get the most of comments etc. I think according to Eisenhardt's table this can be considered as a strength of the paper as a good getting started step. However at crafting instruments and protocols step I think this paper uses more quantitative data collection, in my opinion qualitative data collection is less that can be seen as weakness o the paper. Moreover the lack of qualitative data can be seen at step shaping hypothesis as answer for the question “why” here is not satisfactory enough in my opinion.

References

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14(4), pp. 532-550.

Pike, C. J, Bateman, P. J, Butler, B. (2013). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol 19, pp 56-77

Sams. S, Park, H. P. (2013) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol 19, pp 712-749