This document discusses qualitative research methods for analyzing online text and images. It describes the author's journey across different methodological approaches in human resource management, identity and diversity, and entrepreneurship research. These have included digital methods like tracking online data and trawling websites, as well as visual analysis techniques. Challenges of online research are noted around data volume, authenticity, and publishing multimodal findings. Future developments may involve more socially distanced research and combining digital and traditional methods as data becomes more complex, ephemeral and multimodal.

1. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH WITH ONLINE TEXT AND
IMAGES
Katrina Pritchard
7/12/21
k.l.pritchard@swansea.ac.uk
@ProfKPritchard
katrinapritchard.wordpress.com

2. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
SESSION SUMMARY
• My methodological journey
• Tracking and trawling for online data
• Exploring web-based images
• Challenges and future developments

3. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
MY METHODOLOGICAL JOURNEY
HRM
•Ethnography
•Discourse analysis
Identity &
Diversity
•Interview studies
•Digital methods
•Visual methods
•Narrative analysis
Entrepreneurship
•Interview studies
•Digital methods
•Visual Methods
•Material and creative methods

4. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
MY METHODOLOGICAL JOURNEY
HRM
•Ethnography
•Discourse analysis
Identity &
Diversity
•Interview studies
•Digital methods
•Visual methods
•Narrative analysis
Entrepreneurship
•Interview studies
•Digital methods
•Visual Methods
•Material & creative methods
Personal Reflection
Method Guides
Methodological
Challenge

5. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGE
• Challenging assumptions about appropriate objects of study
• Turning sociomateriality back onto research practice
• Learning more about the socio-historical production of knowledge (self-
challenge)
• Extending exploration of multi-modal and digital research

6. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
TRACKING & TRAWLING
Most methods are digitally mediated & use proprietary tools
Tracking:
• follows or tracks a particular event/people/concept due to
their engagement with a specific topic of relevance
• can be easily automated via alerts or bespoke
programming
• once set up can be modified but not retrospectively
Trawling:
• uses specific search prompts to provide material across a
range of sources
• most commonly manual, retrospective and easily amended
• can be repeated multiple times with variation

7. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
flexible
adaptable
timely
TRACKING & TRAWLING

8. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
flexible
adaptable
timely
Enables you to work
within different
paradigmatic stances
THEREFORE
requires a genuine,
ongoing engagement
with the ontological and
epistemological framing
of your research
endeavour
Enables you to work with a range of
online and digital resources
THEREFORE
Requires an understanding of the
way in which these resources, and
the means of accessing them, shape
our understandings
Enables you to look back
and/or look forward
THEREFORE
requires careful
consideration of the
temporal framing of research
objects and subjects and
encourages us to reflect on
time within our research
practices
TRACKING & TRAWLING

9. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
EXPLORING WEB-BASED IMAGES
• Online visual content: traditional visual media, contemporary forms and
combinations in multimodal presentations
• Embedded in particular sites but also shared, transferred and transformed
• Examine Rose’s (2016) sites of: production, the image itself, and audience
• Why study?
‘media spectacle’
(Tan, 2011)
‘cultural text[s]’
(Milestone & Meyer,
2012)
‘public pedagogy’
(Stead and Elliot, 2019)
‘mediascapes’
(Banet-Weiser, 2018)
‘shifting relationship between word and
image’
(Rämö, 2011)

10. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
PROJECTS
HRM
• Google Image Search
• Stock images
• Developed ‘Combined
Visual Analysis’ (CVA)
methodology
Pritchard, K. (2020). Examining
web images: a combined visual
analysis approach. European
Management Review, 17(1), 297-
310.
Ageing
• Stock Images from online
news media
• Davison’s Portrait Codes
• Used in group photo-
elicitation
• Thematic analysis of
responses
Pritchard, K., & Whiting, R. (2015).
Taking stock: A visual analysis of
gendered ageing. Gender, Work
& Organization, 22(5), 510-528.
Entrepreneurship
• Google Image Search
• Following the images
across online spaces
• Multiple image forms
• Applied CVA + Davison’s
portrait codes, analysis of
gaze & gesture
GWO Conference 2021, with Dr
Helen C Williams & Dr Maggie C
Miller

11. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
MAPPING ACROSS: THE METHODS
Portrait
Analysis
(Davison, 2010)
Physical, Dress,
Interpersonal,
Spatial Codes
Combined Visual Analysis CVA (Pritchard, 2020)
Categorical Compositional Montage (what are these images of)
Thematic Compositional Analysis (how are these images constructed)
Semiotic Analysis (what might these images mean)
Specific Visual features:
Gaze (e.g. Martinez, 2020) and Gesture (e.g. Kendon, 2004)
Collecting digital data
Tracking and Trawling (Whiting and Pritchard, 2020)

12. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
EXPLORING GENDERED CONSTRUCTIONS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
• Digital spaces seen as either representation of the entrepreneurial or site of
entrepreneurial activity – but how are these recursively intertwined? (Swan,
2017)
• How do digital spaces operate as sites of public pedagogy? (Stead and
Elliot, 2019)
• Existing research tends to impose a static frame onto digital spaces, to hold
them in place for analysis – what happens when you allow movement?
• Extending focus on women to consider masculinity and femininity within
same research study

13. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
CHALLENGES
• Curating vs collecting
• Volume of data: how to focus and filter
• Circularity, flow, and transience
• Authenticity and fakery
• Platformization and algorithm mysteries
• Ethical and copyright considerations (and cost of purchasing
rights)
• Publishing (especially multimodal data)

14. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
• The future is socially distanced so research will be too?
• Increasing use of digital in our day-to-day work
• New combinations of digital and traditional methods
• Data is evolving:
• Ephemeral, transitory nature
• Complex multimodality is now the norm
• New challenges – deep fake
• Platform wars

15. © 2021 Katrina Pritchard. All rights reserved.
THANK YOU!