Page 117 [117]
116 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
strategies (e.g., relying on support from family and friends or reaching out
to authorities) suggested by youth workers and peers. Users also shared
their anxieties and offered emotional support to each other. In contrast,
another study by Abidin (2019) identified patterns of abusive behavior on
social media through examined comments on posts from six Singaporean
influencers over three years, with a focus on the presence of hate speech and
aggressive, harassing posts.
In the narratological analysis of Web 2.0 content, the researcher has to
consider the post together with its comments as a narrative. The comments
on the autobiographical narratives of vulnerable victims (e.g., #metoo posts)
posted on social media or content-sharing portals present a mixed picture.
Asynchronous interaction and facelessness unlock users’ inhibitions. In
these narratives, the narrator is the protagonist who enters into dialogue
with familiar or unfamiliar characters. The antagonist in the narrative is the
perpetrator, and the context of the story is clear in the post. The point of
view of both the narrator and the users commenting is usually first person.
Additional analysis criteria could include the number of likes and the types
of emoticons that a post has received.
The researcher can also use media discourse analysis to examine the
appearance of news on social media. The evaluation criteria for such content
can be: (1) layout and structural organization; (2) objects; (3) actors; (4)
language, grammar, and rhetoric; (5) discursive strategies (e.g., manipulation
techniques through highlighting and framing; how characters are presented;
political coloring; legitimization techniques); and (6) ideological standpoints.
In particular, the study of representations of poverty, crime, minority groups,
and migration is made more complete when considering these aspects
(Horbacauskiene, 2021).
Dornyei and Mitev (2015) argue that the primary goal of netnography is to
better understand the behavior and decision-making mechanisms of online
consumer groups. New applications which allow for user interactivity have
fundamentally democratized marketing communication, as consumers can
directly rate the real characteristics of a product or service on social media
or on social platforms. Online rating platforms allow users to give feedback
on services using a five-point scale, usually marked with stars, and to give
their opinion in narrative which can even be illustrated by photographs. Such
data can be accessed by the researcher without direct intervention.
Direct feedback pushes companies to incorporate new aspects into their
quality assurance systems, but also leads to higher quality services and
products as consumers interact with each other. To analyze consumer
behavior, which is sometimes democratic, sometimes intentionally biased,
a netnographic approach from the field of cultural anthropology was utilized
by Csordas and Markos-Kujbus (2018). In the research, textual and visual
content analysis was used to examine user evaluations of a tourist destination.
By analyzing consumer narratives, the researchers were able to uncover both