Theme 6 - Pre Seminar

I have chosen to analyze the research article Social Practices Around iTunes by Amy Voida, Rebecca E. Grinter and Nicholas Ducheneaut from 2006. The article was published in Volume 35 of the series Computer Supported Cooperative Work pp 57-83. The article’s main objective is to investigate the practices surrounding music sharing by looking at the Apple’s music platform iTunes. The method for this investigation is a series of semi-structured interviews with users of the music platform iTunes. The interviews focused on specific examples of social aspects of iTunes use and their attitudes around sharing music through iTunes’ music sharing functions. All the interviewed (13 individuals) were employees of the same corporation. Semi-structured interviews means that the interviewer and respondents engage in a formal interview. The interviewer has a list of questions and topics that need to be covered during the conversation, usually in a particular order. The interviewer follows the list, but is able to follow topical trajectories in the conversation that may stray from the guide when he or she feels this is appropriate. The benefits of semi-structured interviews is that questions can be prepared ahead of time which allows the interviewer to prepared. Semi-structured interviews also allows the conductor of the interview to deviate from the prepared questions based on what the interviewee says. The limitations of semi-structured interviews is that, besides taking a lot of time and effort, it requires skills in the one conducting the interviews and the study is hard for others to replicate.

In my bachelor thesis a part of our study consisted of semi-structured interviews so I already had some experience of the method before. This paper did not unfortunately give much detail on how the interviews were conducted or structured. However, it bases the entire study on these interview which I found a bit odd at first. I would have thought some sort of quantitative study was made before and led to the qualitative study. In this case there was not quantitative study but there was a thorough literary study that led to the semi-structured interviews.

A methodological problem with this particular study is their chosen interviewees. The interviewees had to share the same network in order for this study to work, which is why they choose a group of people who worked together. However, there is no mention on why exactly they were chosen for this study. If general conclusions about iTunes user are meant to be drawn maybe the fact that they probably have a lot in common might affect the outcome.

Eisenhardt has this to say about a case study in his paper Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.

“The case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings.” - Eisenhardt

A case study is a strategy that combine data collection methods such as interviews, and questionnaires. The evidence may be qualitative, quantitative or both. Case studies typically combine data collection methods such as archives, interviews, questionnaires, and observations. The evidence may be qualitative (e.g., words), quantitative (e.g numbers) or both. The actual case study is a study within a context where all the collected data is relevant to that context.

I have looked at the following paper containing a case study: Feng Gu, Gunilla Widén‐Wulff, (2011) "Scholarly communication and possible changes in the context of social media: A Finnish case study", The Electronic Library, Vol. 29 Iss: 6, pp.762 - 776

The paper investigates the influence of social media on scholarly communication. The aim is to provide an overview of researchers' use of a certain web technique (Web 2.0), and discuss a possible change of information behaviors in the context of scholarly communication.The authors writes the purpose of the paper and defines important concepts and expressions within the topic that is needed to understand the paper. It also has a literature review that presents what is know in the field, both in social media and scholarly communication. The authors select, based on the previous, the Åbo Akademi University as the subject for the study. The developed library system in Finland and the lifelong education system in universities are beneficial to the rapid development of new network technology and a new scholarly environment. The target population for the survey was university researcher and employees. The study consisted of a questionnaire  The questions were divided into five groups: the basic characteristics of the participants, the information practices in social media, the application of Web 2.0 tools in research, teaching, and daily life, the attitude about the information quality and collective writing, and the expectations of library services. Based on the conclusion the authors draw, they presents how their findings could be implemented in scholarly communication and examples of future studies.

Sources:
Amy Voida, Rebecca E. Grinter and Nicholas Ducheneaut (2006) Social Practices Around iTunes Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Volume 35 pp 57-83.

Feng Gu, Gunilla Widén‐Wulff, (2011) "Scholarly communication and possible changes in the context of social media: A Finnish case study", The Electronic Library, Vol. 29 Iss: 6, pp.762 - 776

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). theme 6 Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–550. http://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.1989.4308385