ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the potential synergies between qualitative approaches and big data analytics, as researchers work with larger and more heterogenous data sets and use computer-assisted analytic tools with increased affordances for mixed methods research designs. It explores some of the new techniques and directions for adapted methodologies for qualitative researchers to optimize hybrid analytics methods. The chapter considers the use of multimodal analysis for heterogenous digital texts that combine images, words, audio, and other modes, and which span multiple media. Qualitative researchers collect descriptive and textual data that often requires some form of computer-assisted or semiautomatic text analysis. The use of computer software for qualitative analysts has been accepted only gradually since the late 1980s. Netnography is an ethnographic approach to social media research that has the potential to integrate big data analytic methods, while upholding similar principles and methods as qualitative research, ethnography, critical ethnography, and action research.
