Edward Appleton, in a recent article posted on RW Connect, lead with the a title that asked, “Can Online Qualitative Research Be Potentially Misleading?”
Appleton was inspired by an excellent presentation by Peter Totman of Jigsaw Research that showed how online persona were often very different to real-life observed identities, and that people were observed to express differently and sometimes hold different opinions depending on whether they were participating online or in person.
In his RW Connect post, Appleton postulated that there were serious practical implications for online qualitative based on the overall insight of talk that what you see online is only one version of the truth. He goes on to bring up several points, one of which was “If you wish for depth of insight, go offline.”
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