Navigating netnography: A guide for the accounting researcher

Abstract

Netnography (Kozinets) is a new research method that has become increasingly popular within the social sciences. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the accounting scholar to this new methodology and suggest its role in researching issues of accountability. The paper first advocates the significance of the online world as a research site for the accounting scholar and provides a review of the extant accounting literature that has used the internet as a data source. It then summarizes the key components of netnography and reviews the recent scholarship in qualitative accounting that has used this new methodology. Opportunities for future research are subsequently discussed. In particular, the paper promotes the use of netnography for furthering an understanding of accountability, whether that be in private, public, or nonprofit organizations. Advances in technology have created new forms of engagement between corporates and stakeholders and between government and citizens. It has launched new arenas to complain and voice opinion and a plethora of new performance metrics. Netnography offers scholars the methodological tools to research such new modes of accountability in the digital age.

The UK COVID‐19 app: The failed co‐production of a digital public service

“…The lockdowns imposed by governments amplified the salience of digital and social media platforms for citizens to speak out and communicating views on governments’ emerging responses to the pandemic. Acknowledging this role of social media in facilitating discourse (Bellucci & Manetti, 2017 ; Mansoor, 2021 ), our study mobilizes the methods of netnography (Jeacle, 2020 ; Kozinets, 2015 ) and discourse analysis (Cassell & Symon, 2004 ; Dick & Cassell, 2002 ; Duval & Gendron, 2019 ) to examine public perceptions of the CTA introduction. This section discusses the research approach and design of our study.…”

“…Accounting research acknowledges the informative richness of social media data, its ability to construct and communicate “accounts” and “counter accounts” and reflect the overall public sentiment (Duval & Gendron, 2020 ; Gallhofer et al., 2006 ). Equipped with a corresponding research method called netnography (Bellucci & Manetti, 2017 ; Jeacle, 2020 ), scholars have examined the role of social media discourses in the areas of dialogic accounting, stakeholder engagement, social reporting and accountability (Bellucci et al., 2019 ; Jeacle & Carter, 2011 , 2014 ; Neu et al., 2019 ). Netnography allows the researcher to observe textual discourse, while preserving the authentic nature of discussions created and shared freely by numerous contributors (Bellucci & Manetti, 2017 ; Jeacle & Carter, 2011 ).…”

A transaction cost perspective on blockchain governance in global value chains

“…Prof Robert Kozinets introduced it in 1995, rooted in traditional ethnography in participants observation. Recently, this method is gaining more attention in academic research (Jeacle, 2021) due to the rich source of online data created by digital communications that made Netnography more appealing, naturalistic, objective and unobstructive and it is faster, simpler and less expensive (Jeacle, 2021;Kozinets, 2002Kozinets, , 2020. Compared to other qualitative research techniques, the distinctive value of ethnography is that it surpasses at revealing the story, understanding complex social phenomena, and supports the researcher in developing themes from different stakeholders of the research phenomenon.…”

Old ways and new means: Indigenous accountings during and beyond the pandemic

“…Netnography is a qualitative research methodology that has been referred to as ethnography of the Internet as it adapts ethnographic techniques to the study of communities and cultures that emanate through computer-mediated communications (Kozinets, 2010). In a guide for accounting researchers, Jeacle (2021) identifies three forms of data that can be collected from netnographic research. These are passive (purely monitoring and observing), active (co-created data) and reflexive (reflexive field notes from online observation).…”

“…These notes and reflections contributed to the abductive thematic analysis process as the particularities of the Indigenous context were clarified between authors. Data were then anonymised in line with rapidly developing ethical guidelines around social media use (Jeacle, 2021). The thematic categories that emerged from the data and reflective field notes were also applied to popular news articles about the page.…”