About the Editors

Citation

(2011), "About the Editors", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2011.21614aaf.001

About the Editors

Article Type: Practitioner perspectives From: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 14, Issue 1

Sheila Keegan holds a PhD and is a Chartered Psychologist and Founding Partner of Campbell Keegan Ltd, a business and social research consultancy, working with multi-national, blue chip companies and government departments providing a psychological grounding for understanding people’s motivations, drives, fears and motivations. Sheila Keegan is a Fellow of the MRS, a regular speaker at MRS, ESOMAR, AQR, BPS conferences and teaches on MRS and AQR research training courses. She has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio 4. She has written for various publications including The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Psychologist, Psychologies Magazine and Mensa Magazine. She is a Committee Member and a Newsletter Editor for the British Psychological Society in the “Qualitative Methods in Psychology” section.

Sheila Keegan and Rosie Campbell, Campbell Keegan Ltd, London, UK.

Rosie Campbell is Co-founder of the Research Consultancy, Campbell Keegan Ltd and is currently the Chair of the Association for Qualitative Research, the professional body for commercial qualitative research. She is trained in systemic management and therapy and is experienced in leading team development and strategy programmes. She also specialises in child and youth markets. She has given papers and run workshops for various bodies including the MRS, AQR, Social Research Association, Department of Transport and in educational contexts. She has a PGCE and has taught in secondary schools.

Workshop review: analysing the language of interviews

In the last year or two, market and social researchers have been rushing to utilise blogs, forums and social networks – and many are proclaiming these research tools to be the next big trend in research. Often there is something evangelical about the haste and enthusiasm with which these tools are being adopted, which belies the consideration, reflection and trial that traditionally accompanies new research methods. Rosie Campbell’s paper comprises a plea for greater caution. It urges us towards greater “language intelligence”, particularly when we are attempting to understand the use of language in mediums such as forums and social networks, in which protocols and rituals in language are still very much evolving. Our considerable understanding of the importance of context to communication cannot be ignored. We cannot simply assume that language means the same when expressed in a blog as it does when we speak face to face – and yet often these assumptions are being made in the rush to adopt new online research methodologies. Campbell drags us back to the future in addressing this critical issue for the burgeoning web-based research methodologies.

Sheila Keegan

sheila@campbellkeegan.com

Online language: new messages in new media?

More and more research is happening online and the trend shows little sign of abating. Indeed, the growth is exponential and arguably, it is a terrific thing for the research community.

Or is it? I am concerned about the gold rush to sell market research online communities, panels, SMS surveys, communities, listening platforms, ethnography and buzz mining (which, incidentally is more or less what we used to called “desk research”). There are core issues that we are simply not addressing. For instance, what are we making of all this online and electronic data; is it deepening our understanding or are we just accumulating access points?

At one level, these prolific data streams are naturally and usefully enriching. When did you last visit a new client or start working with a new agency without checking out its web site, log and LinkedIn profile? For any endeavour which can broadly be termed “research” we have an exciting and ever widening access to samples and methodological opportunities for research. Indeed, the amount of “data” we could potentially scour, collect and deliver seems endless. Instant, copious and rich – what could be better in a world where data are our bread and butter?

I see two clouds that could deliver rainstorms on this parade. First up is the worrying – and growing – tendency to conflate data with “insight”. We hear this everywhere, especially in the blogosphere. It goes something like this […] “continuous insight feeds from social media.” (that’s from an industry grandee […]), or how about “forums […] are such a rich source of insight”. There may well be “insight” to be sourced through “listening” or more interactive engagement with social media communities and groups, but most often what is referred to is simply what we, in the qualitative research community, quaintly used to call “verbatims”. And we used “verbatims” to illustrate and help to evolve insight for our clients – we did not simply offer these data up as “the findings”.

Indeed, this kind of “selling of reportage” was regarded as unworthy of the name “research”. “Good” research required disciplined, thorough analysis and interpretation – and still does. Surely, by now it is established that the material of our research – the language, comments, words of all kinds are the clay from which we co-create useful research directions and answers for and with our clients. It is not “the answer” in itself.

A second concern about the development of online and mobile research methods is rooted in the critical issue of analysis. Much of the data we are now talking about comes from social networks and online communities – and it feeds in continuously to the researcher. Frankly, it is a new and very different language – possibly, many different “languages”. We cannot behave as if we know what it all means. We cannot use old models of garnering meaning. We cannot rely on the surface of the words. Nor can we assume a simple “transmission” model of communications theory – a model which has long been abandoned within advertising and marketing thinking.

We can collect this data, increasingly and instantaneously in real time. There is no day or night, no geography and no boundaries. We do not understand the context in which the data has been created. Yet, on the horizon, are text analytics and capturing systems which may mean a team of bots can do our research work for us as we sip a glass of merlot watching Mad Men.

Any researcher worth his or her salt knows that taking words, comment and expressed beliefs at face value never got us to the breakthrough understandings which our clients pay us for. Qualitative researchers are inclined, through training in consumer psychology and/or intensive and lengthy experiences, to take a post-modern, socially constructed, Wittgensteinian view of language, in which there is an important symbolic, “constructing” as well as “delivering” role. “Messages” are neither exactly that which is “sent” nor exactly that which is “received”. The reality is constructed in the transaction; the words and phrases selected, the understandings created are highly situation dependent.

This three comment “conversation”, for example, – a snippet from “naturally occurring conversation” collected in an ethnographic project – reveals far more than a simple, contractual message:

• •

  A Did you get any more Alpen on your way home?

• •

  B Christ, I’ve had the longest and worst day ever […]

• •

  A You act like I’m some kind of second class citizen in this relationship […]!

So, no need for a masterclass in conversation or narrative analysis for most of us to appreciate that we are “naturally inclined” to deduce far more than the simple or contractual message of this exchange (which is, essentially, that B forgot to get the muesli […] ) And we know better than to conclude either that Alpen is (necessarily) a highly emotional brand, or indeed that it is the make or break product in a successful relationship.

As researchers, when we hear a string of “might’s”, “maybe’s” or “other people could’s”, we know from our experience of analysing language in the moment that we are getting a polite rejection of whatever we are talking about.

In other words, we have always acted – wisely – as if language tells us far more than the simple “facts” and has the potential to reveal worlds beyond the words. We find evidence of the cultural discourses that run through our society, the stories that inform thinking in particular market areas and we learn about the hard-wired belief systems of individuals.

Online, in social networks and certainly in textspeak, whole new worlds of language use are emerging. Are you the same person on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn? Are you the same person in any virtual environment as in your “real” world? Is not some of the point of “playing” in these spaces about creating new identities? Quite possibly you use rather different “voices” in these forums? Significant cultural discourses are created by our “semi-avatar” beings retweeting a link whose purpose might be to tell a story about the kind of intellectual life we want others to see us living or in gathering high numbers of friends or followers, increasing our “popularity” – and possibly assuaging our existential angst.

What about the language we see, read and use in these new forums? Take this example of a snippet from my 20-year old daughter’s Facebook page a couple of months ago (which I have her permission to reproduce, I should add):

• •

  Jo Allen massive lolz ed

• •

  Jo Allen wow wa wee wa

• •

  Jo Allen me julie best mum

• •

  Jo Allen buy tickets mandem.wick

Visible for possibly two or three days, the page contained exchanges and statements about my daughter, her friends, her age, her lifestyle and many other encoded ideas. Are we equipped to analyse this kind of language in the way we might have done the “maybe” comment in a focus group or the unspoken meanings in the ethnographic exchange about Alpen?

The qualitatively inclined researcher might be better equipped to explore the meaning of, for example, the almost compulsory use of lower case letters. This infers an ease with the medium, modelled on the single finger mobile phone texting process (so it speaks of an “on-the-go” world) and beyond this, it heralds a knowledge of highly contemporary social culture, especially when used for first names (“ed” is a friend). Or how about the obfuscating abbreviations – what does this choice of words signify? “Lolz” is a third-level reference, firstly to the original “lol” (the well established internet abbreviation for “laugh out loud”), secondly “Americanised” via the “z” in the plural, thirdly it is most likely ironic anyway, with no laughing involved. All this obfuscation helps to place Jo within her peer group and, like spray marking by animals, helps to define the group’s boundaries, keep out the uninformed and limit her mother’s “stalking”.

The use of slang much employed by white middle class youth, is evident in the reference to a line from a rap song line and mandem indicating the group of friends (ironic given that the request is to buy air tickets for a ski holiday).

Some of this I know because, as the author’s mother, I am semi-included. Some of it comes from cultural exposure and some I understand because I am positing new language analysis which is appropriate to this new kind of use.

I am not an “expert” but I am sure I can glean far more understanding from far less content that any text analytic gizmo out there – essentially because I have the intellectual lubricant of human emotion which, as neuroscience increasingly confirms, is far more useful in analysis and understanding than any capturing technology can ever be, however, many social network sites it scours.

What I am certain about is that we need far more exploration in this arena. The nuanced ironies of “public” communications online, the way responses, statements, comments, attitudes are expressed through language online and in the even more mannered and abbreviated SMS world need to be seriously and thoughtfully considered as we accumulate ever more and more research data from such sources. There is a strong argument for teaming up with academia in order to develop new thinking and sound theory.

If the upsides of the new forums are access and breadth I think it is timely and sobering, to remind ourselves, in the research community, that technology would not do us out of a job. Let us use more of our famous intellectual curiosity and historical adaptability to take on the challenge of researching the new language frontiers culture rather than risk drowning in the rising seas of data.

Rosie Campbell

Campbell Keegan Ltd

Rosie@campbellkeegan.com

This paper is based on a conference paper delivered by Rosie Campbell at the March 2010 UK Market Research Society Conference. If you would like a copy of the full paper, please contact Rosie Campbell on the e-mail above.