Discourse Analysis of Blogs: Analyzing Language to Maximize the Value of Consumption-Oriented Blogs as Data Source
The value of blogs to consumer research has been established; however, its full potential is still to be realized as empirical analyses into their use have been dominated by quantitative studies. There is a fundamental research gap in the range of methods
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School of Management, Swansea University, Swansea, UK [email protected] Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK {scott.mccabe,sally.hibbert}@nottingham.ac.uk
Abstract. The value of blogs to consumer research has been established; however, its full potential is still to be realized as empirical analyses into their use have been dominated by quantitative studies. There is a fundamental research gap in the range of methods adopted by researchers which has limited blogs as a source of valuable insights. This paper asserts the importance of language and the rhetorical functions of blogs as social interaction contexts where meanings are created and channeled; thus, offering a route to develop better understandings of authors and their narratives. Using discourse analysis to examine blogs, the paper demonstrates how a focus on language can provide rich insights to understand consumption experiences. Discourses of travel that emerged from the analysis were presented and theoretical and practical implications were outlined. Keywords: Blogs · Discourse analysis · Consumer narratives · Travel stories
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Introduction
Extant literature on consumption-oriented blogs has provided evidence on how blogging has empowered consumers to self-publish their experiences and marketers and researchers have recognized the opportunities for these naturally occurring data as a data source (See work of Lu & Stepchenkova, 2015; a systematic review of user-generated content applications in tourism and hospitality research [1]). Consumption oriented blogs are valuable to marketers because they are accounts of products and experiences that relate to consumers’ lives and which allow them to internalize the symbolic meanings embedded in their experiences [2]. Although there is an increase in empirical work demonstrating the potential of blogs in marketing these are dominantly quantitative in nature. This has also been observed in existing literature on travel blogs. According to Banyai and Havitz (2012), content of travel blogs has commonly been reduced to statis‐ tical data and mere categories [3]. There are only a few studies on travel blogs using qualitative research methods such as narrative analysis, qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis [4–8]. Most empirical work mining travel blog content has been quan‐ titative content analysis focused on specific destinations and extracting common themes © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. All Rights Reserved Y.K. Dwivedi et al. (Eds.): I3E 2016, LNCS 9844, pp. 522–532, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-45234-0_46
Discourse Analysis of Blogs
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related to destination image, tourist evaluation of the destination and actual tourist behavior [7]. On the other hand, netnography has been used to analyze consumptionoriented blogs in different consumption contexts [2, 9]. One reason for the use of more quantitative techniques could be the huge amount of
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