Research Design Framework for Understanding Online Conversations

While the phenomenon itself goes by many names – social media, discussion forums, computer-mediated communication, online conversations – people have been talking together online for over three decades. Research into what happens in these spaces has a long history across many disciplines, but little attention has been paid to ensuring the methodological alignment needed to produce trustworthy, valid findings to answer important research questions. In this panel presentation, researchers from the University of Georgia and Emory University will report findings from their analysis of online conversations, guided by the Paulus and Wise (2019) research design framework. Data sources for these studies include blog posts from The Abstinence Clearinghouse website (Copple), the “Classroom Victories” Chronicle of Higher Education forum (Ciudad-Simmons), teacher presence across social media platforms (Eber), posts to an online support group for people with Alzheimer’s disease (Halpin), the r/teenagers subreddit (Lee), and the College Confidential message boards (Lemon). Methodological challenges such as ethical approaches to treating online conversations as data, tools for data extraction, effective bounding of what often seems to be an endless amount of online conversations, and the application of qualitative data analysis methods will be explored. Paulus, T.M. & Wise, A.F. (2019). Looking for insight, transformation and learning in online talk. Routledge