Mediernas utveckling i vår tid innebär stora utmaningar för mediereglering som ett sätt att värna demokratiska värden. I detta kapitel diskuterar medievetaren Pernilla Jonsson Severson och journalisten Andreas Ekström medieregleringens kopplingar till etik och hur regleringen kan värna flera demokratiska värden samtidigt.

As a part of the DiMPAH-project, the authors have developed an open educational resource (OER) on netnography. In this paper, the OER is presented and critically discussed as the broader problem identified during course-development is made explicit and explored through two research questions: 1) How can an OER be designed that positions netnography as a viable methodology for the digital humanities? 2) How can an OER be designed that theoretically and methodologically combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches for doing netnography?

An up-to-date theoretical overview of netnography as a methodology for studying social experiences online is provided. Methodological considerations are presented, aimed for sensitizing students to nuances of active (participatory) and passive (non-participatory) netnography through two analytical concepts. The OER is presented through three case studies and a learning scenario offering flexible and authentic technology-integrated learning. Netnography is found to contribute to the digital humanities, overall characterized by method-driven and quantitative approaches, with reflexivity and a potential for critical research and pedagogy. The two analytical concepts community-based netnography and consociality-based netnography allow for a nuanced methodological understanding of how and when qualitative and quantitative approaches should be employed, and how they may complement each other.

Netnography is an adaptation of ethnography to the study of digital interactions. In this course, the ethnographic perspective underpinning Netnography is introduced together with the netnographic approach and different types of netnographic material. Ethnographic procedures adapted to digital settings, such as participant observations, interviews and taking field notes, are described together with Social Network Analysis. Employing both qualitative elements (such as participant observations) and quantitative (Social Network Analysis), learners will work hands-on with pre-selected datasets to do a small-scale netnographic study. This study will depart from questions connected to equality, cultural diversity and public health.

The course includes four units that are designed to gradually introduce the learner to Netnography as a research field and a methodology, but the units can also be studied separately. Each unit includes theoretical content and practical assignments that will allow the learner to develop a thorough understanding of Netnography and a useful skillset for doing netnographies.

As part of a transnational project focused on creating Open Education Resources (OERs) on selected digital methods and fostering learning experiences by taking data from the past into future stories, the authors are currently developing an OER on netnography. Robert Kozinets, who coined the term in the 1990s, recently described netnography as offering a recipe book with clear directions for doing qualitative social media research (2020). 

Designing this OER, we have identified two pertinent methodological issues of netnography that have been debated during recent years: the need to shift focus from “community” to “consociality” (Perren & Kozinets, 2018) and the issue of active versus passive approaches (Costello, McDermott & Wallace, 2017). Using these two methodological issues as a starting point, this paper outlines our understanding of netnography. It provides examples of consequences for how netnography can be taught and practiced in action. 

Consociality is more about contextual fellowship (what we share) than the identity boundary (who we are) associated with communities. While this position holds merit, online communities still exist (and warrant consideration), and consequently, we argue for two possible points of departure for conducting netnographic investigations: 

1) community-based netnography, using the notion of community, focused on interactions characterized by (lasting) communal ties and practices; 

2) consociality-based netnography, using the notion of consociality, focusing on interactions characterized by (fleeting) connections in contextual fellowships. 

These two points of departure frame the nature of the phenomenon of study in slightly different ways, leading us to the debate concerning active and passive approaches in netnographic studies. Costello, McDermott, and Wallace (2017) problematize a certain preference for “observational” or “non-participatory” approaches. Such passive approaches include unobtrusive observations of interactions in a specific social setting. Active approaches include processes to generate elicited material through interactions (such as interviews) between researcher and participants and the writing of field notes.

The critique of passive approaches echoes how a key strength of netnography has historically been described as providing ethnographically thick descriptions of online interactions through the intense and sustained involvement of the researcher in the daily life of the participants (Kozinets, 2010). However, passive approaches are useful to help us navigate vast amounts of digital data and social sites and possibly gain a higher representativity and reduce the risk of bias (Kozinets, 2020). Therefore, we propose that for community-based netnography, it is advisable to engage mainly in active approaches to engage with participants of a community over time. For consociality-based netnography, passive approaches such as selecting and archiving online traces can be enough to conduct a netnographic study. Still, active approaches such as taking field notes should be considered. 

Two cases with practical assignments are discussed in relation to these methodological considerations together with insights for teaching and netnographic practice. In the first case, students are invited to investigate a digital community of their own choosing that they know well. The second case introduces students to an accessible online tool suitable for learning about fundamentals of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for studying consociality using data from Twitter.

References: 

Costello, L., McDermott, M. L. & Wallace, R. (2017). Netnography: Range of practices, misperceptions, and missed opportunities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917700647.

Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Los Angeles: Sage.

Kozinets, R. (2020). Netnography: The essential guide to qualitative social media research. London: Sage.

Perren, R. & Kozinets, R. V. (2018). Lateral exchange markets: How social platforms operate in a networked economy. Journal of Marketing, 82(1), 20-36. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.14.0250

Webisodes, a form of serial storytelling made available on the internet, combine more or less industrially produced television series and variations of fan activism. In this chapter, social media and webisodes interaction is explored as potential subversive forms of representation of gender and sexuality. An empirical analysis of four webisode categories is undertaken. Findings show that social media can serve subversive aspects of webisodes by offering gender prototypes that deviate from the traditional. Furthermore, social media make possible various webisode categories that display certain specificities of forms of audience engagement in various social media platforms. This opens for engagement as expressions like sharing and commenting on the content. Social media is more a ‘validation choir’ of the content and these gender prototypes; comments confirm that one likes the content, like a round of applause. Mainly YouTube seems to invite an international webisode audience as an ongoing validation choir, where comments are still being posted even if the production is 11 years old. Facebook commentaries on webisodes are a powerful discourse of prevailing sexual norm-infused possible lifestyles: love stories between two people that are easily understood as heterosexual or gay or lesbian. Comments on more fluid gender and sexual identities, sometimes clearly found in the webisode, take place on other internet-connected platforms in more a trans or queer community than webisode fan community. The fluidness of webisodes in and between social media is also a subversive act of its own. Webisodes are not pinned down as a form of symbolic order in particular social media contexts. It can also be argued that gay identity is per se a realm of subversive forms of representation of gender and sexuality. The question as to whether or not all these findings provide subversive power in a political sense can only be answered through further study.

The purpose of this study is to identify and discuss aspects of Nordic public service tv (NPSTV) research on what values (normative statements on what is at stake and what is considered worth protecting in relation to understandings of the public service remit) are stated as particularly relevant in distribution changes of teletext, digital tv and play services. 

The historiography shows a movement towards emphasising personalised media, bringing universal access to the many. It is universal service as a trust-worthy PSB service for the majority, not the minority, that protected. The ambitious intentions of NPSTV research to shed light on and not at least protect the Nordic, the European and the general aim of PSB, has motivated safeguarding of the fundamentals: access in the distribution and the financing. These intellectual pleasures in form of considerable anxieties concerning PSB are still predominant. Solidarity towards the few, or caring for under-privileged groups is downplayed. Protecting minority languages or minority issues are not sought after today, as was the case with teletext. Teletext in all Nordic countries included the value of being a special service for the hearing impaired. Research however did not mirror society, doing studies of teletext. DTV and play services are primarily studied as change regarding economic growth, keeping market shares and PSB being relevant in a digital media landscape. The nation-centric and media-centric PSB research approach seem to have become norm again through this development.

This can be seen as research being actors of change, as well as being witnesses to society. It is argued that NPSTV research is both part of a slowly crystallising cultural practice of protecting PSB, and particularly rising to the occasion of triggering events: whatever technology that comes PSB will need to survive. Research show a particular interest in the legal, the structure of the industry organizations and the PSB institutions. However, PSB values like the minorities issue, and small Nordic countries, or the community building aspect of PSB is, as mentioned, lacking.

What this study shows is the need to search for, see and acknowledge and also act on the gaps and distortions that exist. Why are there no strong critical reactions to NPSTV research excluding countries and minorities? Why is there no insight and directions towards how PSB should be striving for coherence of all publics and how coherence strategies mean not only one for all, but also many variances for differences as well as particular content aiming to create a sense of belonging and community? 

This study explores journalists' and researchers’ use of social media methods. An exploratory approach guided by validity and reliability elucidates the nature of “good social media methods for journalism”. Empirical material is my invitations for conferences and courses for journalists, journalism researchers, and digital methods researchers; my teaching and research in these fields. Furthermore, I engage my experiences from being a conference participant in a journalist conference for primary practitioners and researchers. Journalism researchers use social media methods to study how journalism changes through social media by researching journalism forms on specific social media platforms. The findings suggest that, for journalists, suitable social media methods as validity and reliability depend on revealing the online and for fact-checking the validity in the truth-claims to the “offline world”. In this, good social media methods become valid and reliable on their own and as “given”. Whether the social media methods tools have built-in biases or not, and whether all journalism, not only the studied social media, is changing, is not as discussed in journalism research or for practitioners, as in digital methods and critical data studies. Future research is needed to understand how broad and essential the issue of online research methods concernsthe built-in hidden biases in both platforms and tools. 

The fundament for well-functioning relations in all societal spheres and important in all research is trust. This paper explores methodological concerns with trust and digital methods studying social media. Trust in media research emphasize the importance of relational trust, based on how “Trust, honesty, and respect are pre-conditions of the search for truth/truths” (Zuber-Skerritt 2005:54). Trust in journalism is created through fact-checking as a key journalistic process adding to news-selection and editing. When media and journalism research study the spread of social media content, sharing certain content (often news) or not sharing this content, the analysis tends to determine that if something is not shared, it is not trusted. However, in this work several case studies showing the opposite – that non-sharing can signal trust – is presented and discussed. A model of various ideal-types of non-sharing, so called communicative genres (Lomborg, 2011), concludes the paper with suggestions for empirical research for the social networked media YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. A future challenge is argued to exist in ephemeral social media as Snapchat.

This article aims to include autoethnography as a method for understanding and actively working with the researcher as a co-creator in interactive research for social and societal change. Participatory action research is a methodological approach to social change (Brydon-Miller m fl., 2003). It is an approach with unspoken autoethnographic claims that researchers should make the world better for vulnerable groups in society. The autoethnographic approach is understood in the article as a systematic analysis of personal experience to understand cultural experience (Ellis, 2004), both process and product (Ellis m fl, 2011). The unspoken claims are presented in the article through my experiences from being part of a research environment for participatory action research characterized by an extensive research project focused on innovation and growth in the media field. I, therefore, give examples such as epiphanies, self-reported phenomena of transformative experiences, as intense situations and effects that remain. Through my personal story, an ever-present tension in academic culture related to “social change” and “innovation for growth” emerges as opposites. This puts a vague and dissatisfied feeling into words that explain a lot in participatory action research as the approach is used for innovation and growth. For autoethnography to be fully understood and actively worked within and for interactive research, this perspective needs to be included in the research design of interactive research for social and societal change. The retrospective analytic approach I test here can only offer well-founded argumentation to highlight the value of trying this perspective. Autoethnography makes it possible to show how the tensions in academia and economics are valuable in illuminating cultural processes. It emphasizes the importance of autoethnographic elements to shed particular light on methodological issues by assuming and acknowledging the researchers' active role in participatory action research, where subjective norms and ideas are included in the research approach and thus need to be articulated.

One of the manifestations of the struggle for suffrage through culture and discourse is how the movement was and is made visible in media.This paper is a study of Swedish local newspaper journalism on women’s suffrage from 1907 to 1921. The empirical base is the historical newspaper database Swedish Newspapers (“Svenska dagstidningar”) from the Royal Library in Sweden. This database is available for full access on designated local computers at some Universities.The method used is a database search for the word “suffragette” and the open access material consisting of small context visualizations of placing the text and the few text sentences. The results from the local newspapers are compared with the national newspapers. The simple bar charts made available as an automatically generated user interface are the base for comparison. Similarities and differences are discussed concerning quantity to time (how many articles and what year), concerning local-national newspapers of what newspapers, how many articles and what year, and finally, local-local newspapers of what newspapers how many pieces and what year. Some content analysis is made thematically on words visible as a context for the term suffragette. From this analysis, distinguished vital themes are the objectification of the suffragettes (such as beautiful, repulsive), courage (not very common), and the framing of suffragettes as doing atrocity and crime. A highlighted result is the meaning of local suffragettes. The newspapers covering the Swedish capital Stockholm become national news in the local newspapers. The internationally known suffragettes’ activities in London and New York became news in both the Swedish local and national newspapers. Some implications are discussed concerning the newspaper’s political-ideological domicile.In the concluding discussion of the paper, I contemplate the news logic (the news values) of crime and how that made women’s suffrage become news, primarily as something horrifying taking place internationally and in Stockholm.