Getting a Feel for the Data

An ethnographic approach to large textual data sets with the example of digital chats

Abstract

Handling and analyzing large digital text data, such as digital chat or Social Media data, still present challenges for ethnographers. Despite the significant advancements in the fields of Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences there has been comparatively less focus on qualitative, inductive, and subject-centered approaches as methodological solutions for handling large text data. This article presents an approach for structuring and analyzing large text data, using digital chat data as an example, and situates this approach in the ethnographic research process. The approach utilizes relational databases and SQL as a database query language to manage, restructure, and query chat data, making it manageable for qualitative analysis. Including chat data in ethnographic analysis not only enables new insights but also allows ethnographers, especially at the beginning of their research, to establish familiarity with and proximity to the field. The article discusses the chances and limitations of both the approach and the analysis of large written chat data in the ethnographic research process.