Researching Communicative Practice: Web Archiving in Qualitative Social Media Research

Abstract

This article discusses the method of web archiving in qualitative social media research. While presenting a number of methodological challenges, social media archives (i.e., complete recordings of posts and comments on given social media) are also highly useful data corpuses for studying the social media users' communicative practices. Through a theoretical examination of web archiving as a new method enabled by the web itself, and an example-based discussion of the methodological, technical, and ethical challenges of harvesting social media archives, the article discusses the merits and limitations of using social media archives in empirical social media research.

KEYWORDS:

• audience studies
• communicative practices
• qualitative methods
• social media
• web archiving

Notes

In Denmark, for instance, Netarkivet (www.netarchive.dk), a publicly funded agency, preserves the Danish Internet as part of Danish cultural heritage.

A comprehensive review of web archiving and its implementation across disciplines is beyond the scope of this article, which focuses exclusively on social media research. For a detailed review of the history and main issues of web archiving, see Lomborg (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stine Lomborg

Stine Lomborg, PhD in media studies, is an assistant professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen. Her research on social media has been published in a number of international journals, including New Media & Society, First Monday and Philosophy & Technology. She is the author of Social Media – Social Genres. Making Sense of the Ordinary (forthcoming at Routledge).