Content Analysis: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn (Essay Sample)

Qualitative Analysis Exercise: Qualitative Content Analysis
Name of Student
Qualitative Analysis Exercise: Qualitative Content Analysis
Research topic and research question
This paper is aimed at studying the reasons why individuals, particularly youths, join social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn (Kabani & Brogan 2010). Youth are hereby regarded as those people who fall in the age bracket of 15 to 35 years of age. Their choice is informed by the simple reason that they form the active stage of development in the lifespan of human beings, and thus are the main drivers of most facets of development in the society.
In this age of the mobile phone technology and other telecommunication gadgets, more people have been involved extensively, either positively or negatively, in the social media sector. Research poses a question of whether the social media has been beneficial to the society or has been a destructive tool.
The research questions constitute: what role do social media play in culture formation? what are the key benefits drawn from the social media? In unearthing the underlying theme, we investigate an article by Linda Roeder (Roeder 2011) entitled ‘14 Reasons You Should Join a Social Network.’ I’m particularly motivated by the way social media has taken a central role in shaping culture hence curious to understand its long term implications on the society and sociology as a discipline. I’m also keen to investigate the transition of society from the industrial age to the informationbased society. In this article, authored by Roeder and posted on About.com, this year for all with technological prowess, the central argument is that social media has evolved and advanced rapidly in the recent past, from the original purpose of meeting new friends to an enabling environment for societal integration. She argues that apart from one making new buddies, you can among other things be able to modify your profile pictures as well as listen to favourite music (Roeder 2011). For one to get involved actively in social networking, it is imperative that one be relatively, stable income-wise, and be acquainted technologically. In most cases, this fairs well with the middle class and working people, as postulated by the theory of popular culture (Kendall 2011).
Qualitative research and qualitative content analysis
Qualitative research is involved in analyzing words, texts, pictures or symbols as opposed to quantitative research that analyzes numerals statistically, to draw certain conclusions. In brief, qualitative data deals with meanings mediated mainly through language and action. In this paper we seek to understand the social network text qualitatively by employing content analysis approach.
Content analysis deals with both the internal features and the real content of media. It will be used to draw some aspects from the text such as themes, words, ideas, phrases and characters (Palmquist 1980). In content analysis text, include among others, newspaper headlines, speeches, book chapters or interviews. These aspects of the text media are then coded into manageable and meaningful categories (Ian 1993).
It is then analyzed either conceptually or relationally and the results used to make inferences (Palmquist 1980). Conceptual analysis seeks to identify and quantify the presence of a certain concept or characteristic whereas relational analysis examines the relationship among concepts in a given text (Palmquist 1980).
In qualitative content analysis, as earlier pointed out, categories of data need to be coded. Coding may take several methods such as latent versus manifest codes, deductive and inductive coding or axial codes versus systematic codes, among others (David & Sutton 2004).
For the purpose of this paper, the researcher chose manifest codes in order to excellently coin meanings in and out of the text. Manifest codes, in this case, refer to the specific terms that recur within the actual text data collected (David & Sutton 2004).
Sociology of social media / networks: role of social media
There are various reasons that inform social network developers to promote these sites. First, social media should be for the social good (Mansfield, 2011). This includes aspects such as creating awareness for instance, Cancer awareness (Meyerson 2010).
LinkedIn, for example, provides an excellent meeting point for professionals where it enhances interconnectivity and also aids job seekers secure vital connections as well as professionals to showcase their expertise. Second, social media has had a mileage as a tool of attracting more businesses as different public sites can be used to showcase the products of a given company or individual (Kabani& Brogan 2010).
Methodology and methods
In any research, there are two methodologies involved: quantitative and qualitative methods. Whereas the former is associated with positive paradigms, the latter augers well with critical paradigms as Wimmer and Dominick (2010) indicate.
Researchers who choose the interpretive paradigm of qualitative research that rely on methods such as focus groups and ethnography. This paper focuses on a qualitative approach that will help evaluate what several words mean in the context of social media.
Data analysis
There are two dominant ways of analyzing qualitative data. They include content analysis and discourse analysis (David & Sutton 2004). In light of content analysis, as adopted in this paper, the process of analyzing the data followed a given structure where the researcher, first elaborated and refined the categories, searched for relationships and themes among categories, and finally, simplified and integrated data into a coherent theoretical structure (Wimmer & Dominick 2010). From the article earlier referred to, several words / phrases were coined out that could help analyze the overriding themes. According to the article, the following reasons inform the reasons behind getting involved in social networks:
1 To meet new people (making friends in a certain niche),
2 To find old friends,
3 To market oneself (either business wise or political wise),
4 To chat the day away (discuss certain topics or get help in a certain area),
5 To join interest groups,
6 To update friends on your life’s accomplishments,
7 To share photo albums (to share with family members far away),
8 Add videos and music (e.g. for musicians),
9 To get advice,
10 To help others,
To belong (feel wanted).
Out of these, we were able to segregate three major themes why individuals join the social media. This was achieved by a close examination of the discourse of the article where the reasons enlisted were finely synthesized in terms of the presence / frequencies of occurrence and the implied intensity. The units of analysis used for this refinement were phrases identified in particular paragraphs that implied a similar thought or idea.These were categorized as identity, connections and community and subsequently coded as 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The researcher proceeded to quantify the occurrences of these concepts by counting the number of times particular themes are connoted in the article. The table below shows the frequencies and percentages associated with each.
Concept

Frequency

Percent

Identity

21

34%

Interpersonal connection

27

44%

Community

13

21%

From the thematic analysis shown in the table above, interpersonal connections take lead as the reason to why people join social networks, followed by identity reasons, with community related grounds trailing the list. The research findings are related to the middle class and working people who are able to access the soc...