Assessment 1: Critical Review of ‘‘I Just Google It’: Folk theories of distributed discovery’

Student Number:

COMM2910

Communication and Research Methods

Seminar Tutor:

Word Count: 1822

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 In this study, Toff and Nielsen analyse how digital media users who rarely engage with

news, find and access information. Adopting an inductive approach, the researchers identified

three folk theories of distributed discovery with the aim of understanding the cultural resources

participants draw from to navigate the changing digital media landscape.

This study grounds itself in literature about distributed discovery and folk theories, as

well as previous work from the fields of science and technology. The researchers lay out the

aim of their study, which is to understand how audiences ‘find, access, and navigate

information in distributed digital environments’ (p.637) and to use their theoretical framework

focused on folk theories to place their findings in the communication research field. For the

research strategy, Toff and Nielsen adopted an inductive analysis and generated folk theories

through the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. I would argue that using this

mixed-methods approach is a strength of this study, as Clark et al note that combining

qualitative and quantitative strategies can add significant value to research by providing both

an ‘account of structures in social life... [and] a sense of process’ (2021, p.571).

Toff and Nielsen approach this study with an interpretive epistemological position. They

have not only looked at how participants accessed news, and how they interpret and make

meaning of the way they do this, but they themselves also interpreted their findings and

produced three folk theories which show how people navigate an increasingly digital media

environment, and the cultural resources they use to understand it. This epistemological

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position has faced criticism for being too focused on qualitative research (Deacon et al, 2021)

and so a great strength of this study is the fact that interviews have been paired with a survey

which adds to the accuracy of their findings. In addition, Toff and Nielsen have taken a

constructionist ontological standpoint, which allows them to conduct their interviews and

interpret their results with an understanding that culture and social systems are in a constant

state of flux. Their assertion that folk theories and culture can be used as a set of tools to

explain online social interaction and news media navigation takes this constructionist viewpoint

and does not assume that culture is simply an ‘external reality that acts on and constrains

people’ (Clark et al, 2021, p.28). I would argue this viewpoint is a strength of this study as it

allows Toff and Nielsen to view their participants as active users of digital media who have a

role in shaping their reality, rather than taking a technologically determinist standpoint and

assuming that platforms are solely shaping the views of these individuals.

Using an ‘extreme or unique’ (Clark et al, 2021, p.60) case study research design allowed

Toff and Nielsen to target new avoiders specifically and study this unique group. An argument

could be made that a weakness of this study is how the researchers identified their population

of ‘news avoiders’. Using purposive, deviant case sampling, the researchers identified atypical

participants who watched news less than once a month. They partnered with a multinational

market research firm who had access to members of this population which they argue allowed

them to access ‘difficult-to-reach populations’ (p.641), however this restricts the study to only

members of the population who have signed up with this firm and creates a sampling bias. It

might have been useful for the researchers to identify some news avoiders through social

media or local community groups and employ snowball sampling to access hard to reach

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populations or even to ask participants who had already been identified by the marketing firm

to make recommendations of people they know and use snowball sampling to broaden their

population from there. However, I accept that this costs more in time and resources and is not

always feasible.

Using a combination of purposive and quota sampling, Toff and Nielsen identified 43

participants for their study. They chose to recruit participants from ‘relatively disadvantaged

communities’ (p.642) to address gaps in prior research which they stated had focused on well-

educated or wealthy users of media. The sample of 43 people is very small and allows for

greater sampling error, Toff and Nielsen do not explain why the sample is so small so it is

difficult to say whether this was intentional, however Deacon et al note that often in qualitative

data collection sample sizes are small because qualitative methods focus on quality and content

over quantity (2021), this proves to the case with Toff and Nielsen’s study who conducted

lengthy interviews of around an hour per participant. The atypical nature of the sample means

that the researchers are unable to make claims of generalizability, which they acknowledge,

though they have employed quota sampling to ensure over half their sample consists of

working-class individuals in order to ‘better generalize across class’ (p.642). This sampling bias

allows the researchers to amplify the voices of the working class and I would argue that

although it does create a bias, it not a weakness of this study as they have already noted that

their study seeks to fill a gap in research. However, the fact that interviewees were mostly

female does create a bias that potentially weakens this study, and I would suggest that when

repeating this study, future researchers use quota sampling to ensure either an even gender

split, or a majority male sample to fill gaps that this and other studies have left.

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 Though Toff and Nielsen have stated their findings are not supposed to be generalisable.

This is a common feature of case study research designs and could be a weakness due to the

restricted external validity of the study. However, Clark et al observe that advocates of case

studies argue that their findings are not insignificant, because the case study design is not used

with the intention of producing generalizable findings. In the case of Toff and Nielsen’s research

design, we can take an analytic or theoretical view of generalization, where findings from a

study are used ‘to develop theoretical constructs that may be applicable in other contexts’

(Clark et al, 2021, p.61), as in this case with the folk theories that have been generated.

Using the qualitative method of semi-structured interviews, mostly conducted face-to-

face, with a small number being conducted by phone, the researchers gained data from their

participants about both their daily lives and their opinions on issues such as the role of social

media and how they accessed news and information. Beginning the interviews with a focus on

the individuals and allowing the conversation to be ‘driven by the interviewee’ (p.642) is a great

tactic for establishing rapport (Deacon et al, 2019) and will likely have assisted Toff and Nielsen

to gather more granular information from their participants. Clark et al note that during semi-

structured interviews, there is a degree of flexibility in what and how questions are asked by

interviewers to allow the flow of conversation to be maintained (2021), the strength of this

qualitative method of data collection is that more information could be collected from if

participants feel at ease and happy to reveal details of their lives. However, Toff and Nielsen

provide little visibility on what the questions were and therefore it is difficult to see from

reading the piece how replicability is affected. The researchers made the decision to offer full

quotations in this paper, which they admit could feature tangents but which they have

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purposely chosen to include, this strengthens their study and lends greater insight into the

interviewees, increasing the authority of this research. The interviews were digitally recorded

and transcribed, a further strength of their method, which allows researchers to repeatedly

examine and scrutinize their data, protects them from accusations of bias and coercion (Clark et

al, 2021) and will assist with future research as researchers could request copies of the tapes in

order to assist them with replicating the study. However, this is a very time-consuming process

along with the open-ended interviews and could have cost them more resources that could

have been better spent on gathering a larger sample.

In terms of ethical considerations of this study, the researchers use pseudonyms which

allows the individuals to maintain anonymity and could have encouraged them to speak more

freely without fear of being identified, particularly as the researchers have stated that most of

the participants have low socioeconomic status. Toff and Nielsen did not specify the questions

asked and so we cannot know whether answers were responded to without prejudice so as not

to injure the participants’ self-esteem. Another ethical consideration to scrutinize is the

payment of £40 to each participant. The researchers have already established that the

individuals taking part in this process are majority low-income and so the offer of payment

could have effects either way. We aren’t told if the participants understood they would receive

payment prior to the study, or whether this was revealed afterwards. If participants knew prior

to the study, it could have incentivised them to participate and made their contribution feel

valuable, if they found out post-study that they would receive payment, this could have made

them feel that their relationship with the interviewer was merely transactional and could have

caused them harm (Surmiak, 2020).

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 At the end of the interviews, brief surveys were completed to establish additional

demographic information of participants such as their income and educational backgrounds. As

previously mentioned, the addition of this quantitative method compliments the research

design and can increase the integrity of the results (Clark et al, 2021), I argue that it is a

strength of this study as this quantitative data allows the researchers to generate additional

context from the participants, such as their socio-economic background information, and use

this to draw further conclusions and flesh out their folk theories.

Overall, I would argue this is a very strong case study with a successful research

strategy. The strengths of this study are its grounding in relevant literature which helped it to

establish a theoretical framework, allowing this study to be applied across social science

disciplines. The application of a mixed methods approach that combined qualitative and

quantitative data collection methods also added context and improved the integrity of their

findings. The research design was mostly strong, though weaknesses include their small sample

size and the potential bias created by using only participants who were associated with a large

market research firm. Toff and Nielsen aimed to improve the generalizability of this study by

amplifying the voices of working-class individuals, though this could also be considered a threat

to external validity and as such the findings of this study should be treated with caution. This

study is valuable as it builds on existing research surrounding how people find and access news

through digital media and it also contributes to literature surrounding how culture more

broadly affects the way individuals navigate our increasingly digitised news media environment,

particularly when citizens are from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

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References

Clark, T., Foster, L., Sloan, L. & Bryman, A. 2021. Bryman’s social research methods. 6th ed.

[Online] Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Accessed on 4Mar24]. Available from:

[Link]

Deacon, D., Pickering, M., Golding, P. and Murdock, G. 2021. Researching communications: a

practical guide to methods in media and cultural analysis. Third edition. [Online] New York:

Bloomsbury Academic. [Accessed on 5Mar24]. Available from:

[Link]

Jensen, K.B. 2011. The Qualitative Research Process. In Jensen, K.B (Ed.). A Handbook of Media

and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (2nd ed.). [Online]

Routledge, pp. 265-282. [Accessed on 6Mar24] Available from:

[Link]

Surmiak, A. 2020. Ethical concerns of paying cash to vulnerable participants: The qualitative

researchers' views. The Qualitative Report, 25(12), pp.4461-4480.

Toff, B. and Nielsen, R.K. 2018. ‘I Just Google It’: Folk theories of distributed discovery. Journal

of Communication, 68(3), pp.636-657