Thesis Title: Subtitle

Introduction

The primary question addressed in this chapter is how best to examine Facebook in light of the research questions presented in the introductory chapter; that is how to choose methods that will best address the concomitant focus on the social and architectural features of Facebook. Facebook is a large object of study with current estimates of its user base at approximately 1 billion monthly active users (Facebook 2014). By taking a case study approach I was able to preserve the networked and personal nature of Facebook.

Despite Facebook’s large parameters its qualitative characteristics emphasise the individual as each network necessarily begins with a single person and each person experiences a network that is unique to his or herself.
However, to begin this research I needed to delineate my ontological approach to Facebook. This research project is concerned with the interaction between Facebook, friendship, and the self and is situated within the broader context of late modernity. In order to answer these questions an approach that examines both structure and behaviour is necessary. To simply examine the behaviour of participants as it manifests on Facebook leaves the mechanisms by which this behaviour comes to pass unexamined. A critical realist approach gives ontological status to social phenomena which in turn are composed of social structures, of which we can only ever have partial knowledge. A critical realist approach allows me to theorise and account for structuring forces and how they may be involved in the production of these behaviours.
In order to achieve this I employ a case study approach to Facebook that employs three research methods, interviewing, observation and a structured questionnaire to generate data. In this chapter I argue that a case study approach is the best way to examine Facebook in light of the ontological positions of this research and the questions it poses. In order to access the networked nature of Facebook I constructed a case study from my personal network. To access someone else’s network would mean co-inhabiting their
online world via Facebook which is not practical or possible. So while Facebook as a whole constitutes the object of study or the broader phenomenon that structures this research, I situated my research within a network on Facebook.
The analysis of the data generated from this approach is also informed by critical realism. Adopting a critical realist approach to the structure and execution of this research provides a framework that guides the ontological assumptions I made about the object of this research (Facebook) and how I approached the analysis of the data generated. This approach ultimately shaped the findings of this research and its broader contribution to the theoretical discussion surrounding Facebook and other similar technologies.
This chapter is divided in into two parts. The first part begins with the ontological and theoretical assumptions made in this research. I then go on to discuss the execution of these assumptions through my adoption of the case study, and how this case study and the multiple methods employed are consistent with a critical realist approach. I describe the methods used to generate data in this case study in detail and reflect on the practice of this research, and position myself in relation to the data generated. I then detail my analytical approach to the data and provide examples of this approach before concluding with a discussion of the ethical issues associated with this research.