4.3 Research Procedure and Method
4.3.1 Data Collection
‘Found’ Data: I collected the content of the online forum between 2013 and 2014. A two-year content provides access to data on several issues on the forum as often discussions are aligned to ongoing events in Kaduna state and in Nigeria at large. The online forum was founded in 2011 and membership has continued to grow. 2013-14 therefore, was a good timeframe to collect content as discussions and behavior in the forum would have become more determined and purposeful after over a year of consistent growth and increasing activity. Although difficulty in accessing older posts partly contributed to the focus on data from 2013, such recent data also provide access to more current ideas and development on the forum and society generally.
My initial intention was to mine the found content of the forum using a web cloning software as this would allow the content to be preserved offline in its online format. This was also to prevent loss of content should data become difficult to access or denied. It was further to allow me work with the data more conveniently since I would be able to access it as it appears online without need for internet connection. Cloning, however, was a challenge. I experimented with several software such as Offline Explorer Pro, HTTrack, Web Copy, Site Sucker, Wget, Fresh WebSuction and WebCopier. None of these enabled me to copy the content of the group. One of the major reasons for this difficulty was the fact that the Online Forum, hosted on Facebook, which is a very large and diversified website. Unlike other smaller and simple websites, copying the entire site in order to access a single group was not feasible.
In my exploration of discussion boards,10 including Facebooks’ online help community and interaction with a few software developers, I discovered that several people had similar challenges especially with busy forums that had existed for a few years. Accessing old group contents in such forums was experienced as a challenging and slow process, where it was possible. While Facebook recently added settings that allow users to save all the content of their individual Facebook accounts, the only way to access older content of a Facebook group was through the keyword search feature, or to manually scroll through the contents.
I attempted opening the forum and scrolling down to old posts in order to capture the open content as a single archive file using browser extensions such as Nvivo’s N-Capture, Mozilla
10 Some such forums include: www.StackExchange.com; www.facebook.com/help/community; and www.CloudBoomers.com
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Archive Format and PageArchiver. Scrolling had to be done very slowly due to the large amount of content. I used reputable browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Maxthon Browser, Safari, Avant, Opera and a few lightweight browsers specifically designed for accessing Facebook. Only Facebook was allowed to run on the computer and browser during this process and sometimes with only the necessary browser extensions turned on so as to reduce the chances of errors and conflicts that could lead to a browser crash. However, all the browsers froze or crashed after a few hours or days of slow scrolling, requiring a restart. The result was unchanged when the same process was attempted on newer and stronger computers in one of the computer science laboratories of my university. Moreover, the web capturing or archiving extensions used could only capture limited content, mostly content that had been made visible via scrolling.
I had to rely on the search feature on the forum’s platform to access my research data. Thus, I generated as many search terms as possible. My familiarity with the forum and the kinds of discussion that have been going on since 2011, as well as my research questions and objectives, guided me in generating these search keywords and phrases. I also used many different combinations of the terms, and rewrote some of the terms in the different ways that they are likely to be used on the Forum. Thus, the following were some of the search terms generated:
Religion (rel, rln, rgn), Boko Haram (BH, Haramite/s), Christian (Christians, xtn, xty), Muslims (Moslems, Muslems, Moslims), Mosque (Mosques, msq), Church (Churches, ch), Kaduna (KD, Kad, Kada city), Southern Kaduna (SK, Skites, Southern KD), Gurara State, Jihad (Jihadists, jhad), Hausa (Malu, Bahaushe, hausawa), Chibok, Killings, Death, dead, Genocide, Raids, Villages, rural areas, God, Allah, Politics, Politician, Peace, Riots, Conflicts, Crisis, Kidnap, Bombs, explosion, burning, Conference, Government, Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa (PIY), Ramalan Yero, Northern Kaduna, Kaduna North, Federal Government (FG), Faith, Belief, Women, Children, Gunmen, Confess, Repent, Sheikh, Pastor, Bombs, Suicide, Attack, Hausa Fulani, Language, Lingua, kataf, Atyap, Jema’a.
These keywords were very helpful because they returned contents on the exact, or part of the search terms and phrases going as far back as 2012. As the data generated throughout this process were content related to specific search terms and phrases, they were not too heavy and the browser did not freeze or crash when I scrolled down to the beginning of 2013. Each
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displayed page was followed carefully to expand hidden and collapsed contents and comments.
The entire open and expanded page were then printed to PDF using a Mozilla Firefox add-on called Print to PDF 0.1.9.3.1 previously installed on the browser. Many posts contained two or several of the search terms, thus, each time any of the terms in the same content is searched, the content is recalled/returned. The fact that several different keywords returned the same content enhanced rigour in the data collection process, as it indicated that the search was thorough.
While this method returned a high volume of content for the two-year period without discrimination, I had no way of determining whether the process gave me access to all the content for the period, and this is a limitation of my content-collection method. It is possible that important content were not accessed. However, the several words and combinations searched, the repeated content and the overall volume of content captured (after repetitions have been managed) gave me confidence that most of the targeted content was captured, and that the saved content was representative of the posts and conversations on the Online Forum.
Another implication of my data collection process is that although I was careful and thorough, I, to an extent, could be said to have determined the kind of data that was generated and analyzed.
Thus, in order to dilute and manage this level of control over data – though I believe it was minimal – I frequently went through the returned and saved content from each search in order to develop a better sense of the forum; and to find clues for further keywords that could generate content not previously returned by my search terms. This seldom returned new content but I continued the process until I fully established with reasonable certainty that there was no content I had not captured for 2013-2014.
Online Survey: In order to fill the gap left by the collected data in terms of what is known about the users of the forum/study population, I conducted an online survey (see appendix 1). The purpose of the survey was to access relevant demographic information about the Forum users and to directly obtain information about their religious preference, religious literacy and opinions on conflicts involving Christians and Muslims in Kaduna. This ensured that the research did not rely completely on ‘found’ content. The use of a survey also made triangulation possible, enabling me to further ensure the accuracy of the data generated. The survey, thus, provided a valuable resource for the analysis and deeper understanding of the online contents of the forum.
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The survey was self-administered online. An online survey was deemed the easiest and fastest way to access members of the forum. Since the research was focused on the online space and content, it was impossible to access many of the users physically given their diverse locations. It was also a way of experimenting with internet mediated research to better inform my investigation into the digital culture, religion and platforms. I initially intended to administer the survey as a set of three pop-ups of two to three questions each. This would have allowed for easier accessibility and thereby increase the chances of a larger response rate. However, this was not possible, as consulted experts confirmed, because Facebook had no plug-in insertion point that could allow non-Facebook developers to insert features for such a survey. And having Facebook developers consider this feature or administer the survey itself would have been a more challenging and costly task. Thus, since the survey was small with only about ten questions, I considered using online survey administering programs, and experimented with different online platforms.11 I also studied users’ reviews and experiences using these programs.
I settled for the online survey tool that comes with Google Documents, known as Google Forms as Google is reputable for its applications and online tools. Google forms is very easy to use and does not require any special training to create or distribute surveys. It is free to use and can take unlimited number of responses. Google forms are also mobile friendly and participants did not have to use a computer to respond surveys. The responses from the survey were automatically collected in a Google Docs spreadsheet document, and saved on my google drive account online.
This ensured that the data was safe and made the process of analysis much easier. Google forms further supported a variety of question-types that many survey programs did not offer (Agarwal, 2014). Thus, the objectives of my survey were best served and more easily achieved using Google forms.
After the survey was created, the link was shared on the wall of the online forum under investigation, with the permission of the forum administrators and leaders. I wrote a few introductory lines about myself, my study, the purpose of the survey and directed users to the survey link. This introduction was largely a repetition of the content on my information sheet and
11 SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com); Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com);
SurveyGizmo (www.surveygizmo.com) and LimeSurvey (www.limesurvey.org). I also read users’ reviews and experiences using these programs.
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informed consent, which are contained in the survey. The survey was reposted several times afterwards to encourage members to participate.
Given the nature of my study, I think it is important to note here that although the survey was administered online with no direct interaction with the participants, it was nonetheless an interactive process. In my introduction, I thanked the leadership of the Forum for allowing me to conduct the survey. This was a deliberate process that aimed at providing me with some level of credibility among the forum participants, especially among those members who did not know me in person. The post received many ‘likes’ and responses, mostly good-luck wishes. However, the site administrators were also called upon by a user to confirm my claims of being a Nigerian, of having obtained permission from group leadership, and to assure the group that I was reliable and not an intruder or someone with a hidden agenda. A few key members and administrators attested to my credibility, and explained that they had met me in person and that they were familiar with my research. Afterwards, most of the members who took the survey commented on the same conversation thread to say they had taken the survey, and to encourage others to do the same. A few also tagged or shared the survey to their friends, and one participant suggested that the findings of the survey be shared with the group.