LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Learning Through Teaching: ATLAS.ti And Social Media
Andrea Potgieter
Abstract
Social Media is no longer a foreign concept in the current business environment. Companies, for the most part, un(
derstand the value that an effective Social Media strategy can add. Firstly, this paper reports on the possible use of
ATLAS.ti in analyzing user interaction on Social Media platforms, in order to generate feedback that may assist com(
panies in developing and maintaining a customer-focused Social Media strategy. Furthermore, this paper will discuss
the researcher's decision to apply ATLAS.ti for this specific purpose, as well as the challenges and victories that were
faced in introducing a post-graduate student to this tool.
Keywords
ATLAS.ti, Social Media, teaching, learning, post-graduate student
Introduction
With the rise of Social Media and Online Social Networking, Li and Li (2013) argue that it is advisable for
organizations to actively collect and analyze customer opinions to gain business competitiveness, as op(
posed to waiting for customers to make first contact. Organizations should apply Social Media platforms
as data sources for market research and align their business goals with customer expectations, derived
from these platforms (Li & Li, 2013).
This paper aims to discuss the use of ATLAS.ti as a tool to aid organizations in analyzing customer inter(
actions on Social Media platforms, specifically focusing on Facebook and Twitter in this study. Further(
more, this paper will offer a reflection on the challenges that were faced and successes that were had in
using ATLAS.ti for this specific purpose, while introducing a novice researcher to the tool for the first
time.
Literature
The World Wide Web has evolved into a platform whereby content and applications are no longer cre(
ated and published by individuals, but instead are continuously modified by all users in a participatory
and collaborative fashion (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The tool that has made this collaborative environ(
ment possible is Social Media, and the interactive nature of this tool allows businesses to share and ex(
change information with their customers and also allows consumers to share and exchange information
with one another as well (Sashi, 2012). Social Media operates "like a giant word-of-mouth machine,
catalysing and accelerating the so-called viral distribution of information" (Gallaugher & Ransbotham,
2010), and some industry leaders claim that if you do not partake in Social Media, you are not part of
cyberspace anymore (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
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LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Contemporary Social Media also offers a new way of customer interaction with business, which enables
an individual to "consume, produce, and redistribute content" (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010). Highly
engaging Social Media campaigns involving user-generated content, has the potential to generate cus(
tomer commitment to the brand, reinforcing loyalty and making the customer more likely to commit ad(
ditional effort to support the brand in the future (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). This implies that Social Media
gives businesses two important options: Firstly, the traditional customer and business interaction is en(
riched, and secondly, customers and businesses are able to monitor what other customers are saying
about the business (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010).
Even though the idea behind Social Media is far from ground-breaking (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), com(
panies need to embrace the shift in online customer interaction and, instead of managing customers, the
role of the businesses should be to facilitate the collaborative experiences and dialogue that their cus(
tomers value (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010), since, through the Internet, customer influence "extends beyond
geographically proximate contacts, amplifies other customers’ actions, shapes product success, and
moulds markets" (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010).
Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) note that using Social Media is not an easy task and that it may require new
ways of thinking, but that the potential gains are far from being negligible; for example, Dell states that
its use of Twitter has "generated $1 million in incremental revenue due to sales alerts". However, Gal(
laugher & Ransbotham (2010) mention that, even though businesses recognize the importance and pos(
sible advantages of listening to and communicating with customers, many businesses are still struggling
to navigate the emerging complex, consumer empowered environment. A reason for this struggle may
well be because returns from Social Media investments will not always be measured in monetary value,
but also in customer behaviours (consumer investments) tied to particular Social Media applications
(Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). This implies that companies should see Social Media platforms as "transaction
processing systems" where customers create messages and each message is equivalent to a transaction
(Culnan, McHugh & Zubillaga, 2010).
In order to facilitate these online collaborative experiences and extract value from user interaction, busi(
nesses need to know how to use Social Media to their advantage, and to the advantage of their custom(
ers, since ultimately customers will benefit from a richer and more fulfilling online experience with the
brands of their choosing. Baird and Parasnis (2011) state that consumers interact with businesses when
they believe it is to their benefit, feel they can trust the company and decide Social Media is the right
channel to use to get the value they seek. Fischer and Reuber (2011) see the value of this consumer in(
teraction and mention that Social Media can provide a means of “observing” customers, getting to know
customers' needs and preferences, thereby developing personal and company brands. Social Media also
allows firms to create mechanisms for customer-to-customer dialog and then, more importantly, to mon(
itor and mediate that dialog (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010).
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LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
This paper proposes the use of ATLAS.ti as one such mechanism to monitor customer interaction with
brands, and with each other, about those brands. Even though quantitative Social Media Analysis tools
such as Web Analytics provide traditional attributes of page views and unique site visitors, Fisher (2009)
states that this alone is not adequate anymore, since customers are talking to each other and these con(
versations do not necessarily happen on a platform that you can control or measure in the traditional
sense. Also, with the use of qualitative Social Media Analysis tools, the analysis often "requires human
intervention to remove duplications and also check which product or brand was actually referred to",
and it is also generally agreed that "irony or sarcasm is very difficult for machines to understand"
(Branthwaite & Patterson, 2011).
Fisher (2009) also states that Social Media interaction is about "engagement with your customers, your
potential customers, and your critics, at every level of social interaction that modern communication has
to offer" and that businesses need to look beyond traditional ways of measuring this interaction, and
look "into the buzz, the opinions, voices and experiences that people are sharing about your brand".
This paper proposes that ATLAS.ti is a tool that may be utilised to do exactly that, especially when taking
the following differentiation between quantitative and qualitative research into account.
According to Branthwaite and Patterson (2011), the three key features that make qualitative research a
unique and invaluable tool in marketing to consumers include:
•A conversation: a direct dialogue with consumers that is physically face to face, over the
telephone or across Skype – or in the case of using ATLAS.ti, an analysis of customer conver(
sation.
•Active listening for the underlying dialogue: the mental stance; frame of mind; reluctant,
half-suppressed comments and admissions.
•An interactive “merging of minds” (or rapport): to achieve insights and possibilities that can
be extrapolated to marketing issues.
As mentioned by Branthwaite and Patterson (2011), those three features of qualitative research stand in
opposition to Social Media Monitoring (a predominantly quantitative monitoring method), which is:
•Based on an instantaneous, static expression giving a superficial appreciation of the con(
sumer at a single moment;
•Unable to probe and explore the gaps in what is said to get to the meaning behind the ut(
terance;
•A remote and vague understanding of the respondent; and
•Powerlessness to extrapolate findings to new scenarios through “what if” questions.
•Therefore, even though the "chatter of a community can indeed be used to make quantitat(
ive predictions" (Asur & Huberman, 2010), the use of qualitative analysis methods through
the use of a tool such as ATLAS.ti, could provide insight into customer interaction that will
prove invaluable to businesses.
Using ATLAS.ti To Analyze Social Media Comments: The Process
The decision to use ATLAS.ti to analyze Social Media comments, was made while supervising a BA Hon(
ours Information Management student at the University of Johannesburg's Department of Information
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LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
and Knowledge Management. These students are expected to submit a print ready research article in
their final semester of study and this article should, of course, include original empirical research findings.
The author was assigned a student for supervision, and this student decided to base his research article
on the interaction of consumers with specific brands on the Social Media platforms Twitter and
Facebook.
It was assumed from the start that the research method would be qualitative in nature, as the student's
research problem focused strongly on gathering customer insight and knowledge from Social Media in(
teractions. The relevant research problem was established as follows: "What is the significance of online
Social Networking in gathering customer insight and knowledge?" and the objectives of the study were
to analyze the use of social networks by BlackBerry Ltd and Ford and to establish how these companies
gather customer insight by using online social networks.
The research question
"How does Social
Networking help
companies to gather
customer insight and
knowledge?", clearly
requires not only
quantitative data to be
examined, as the need for
insight requires an in-
depth analysis of the
actual conversations being
had between the
customers of these
companies with the
companies themselves, as
well as with each other. In
order to gain such insight,
ATLAS.ti was suggested as
the appropriate analysis
tool.
The author decided, since the student was a novice researcher, to guide him in his analysis of Social Me(
dia comments, and chose the comments for analysis for him. Twenty Facebook posts with their relevant
comments, shares and likes, were selected – ten posts from BlackBerry and ten from Ford. The same
principle was applied for Twitter interactions: twenty Tweets with their relevant replies, favourites and re-
4
Figure 1: Code Manager showing the list of codes the student was asked to use
LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Tweets, were selected – ten Tweets from BlackBerry and ten from Ford. The student was assisted in
downloading the latest version of ATLAS.ti onto his laptop computer, through the University of
Johannesburg's Centre for Technology Assisted Learning's (CenTAL) portal, ULink.
The author created a Hermeneutic Unit (HU) for the student and initially uploaded the ten Facebook
posts for BlackBerry into the HU, before creating a code book for the student to use in his coding pro(
cess.
The HU was then sent (after creating a "Copy Bundle") in its entirety, to the student by using a file host(
ing service. The student was informed about the coding process, and after a couple of examples, was left
to code the remaining BlackBerry Facebook posts. Subsequently, the same process was followed with the
ten Ford posts on Facebook and the ten BlackBerry Tweets as well as the ten Ford Tweets.
5
Figure 2: Example of a oded document
LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
After the coding was completed by the student, the author showed him how to "print" the quotes from
specific codes, as well as the process for creating a frequency table. The student was encouraged to ex(
periment with ATLAS.ti, by creating different frequency tables and subsequently using the data to draw
conclusions related to his research question and sub-questions.
Challenges During The Process
Introducing a student to a new tool, especially a tool which is new to the individual doing the introduc(
tion, is challenging in itself. Initially, the author did not take the student's level of computer literacy into
consideration, making an incorrect assumption about his level of experience. This was especially evident
in his use of Excel while experimenting with the frequency tables. However, the student showed great
potential and that, combined with his enthusiasm and willingness to learn, proved to be a remedy for
most of the computer literacy shortcomings.
Other challenges included the format in which the posts were uploaded into ATLAS.ti. The Facebook
posts could be copied and pasted as text into a Word document and the uploaded into ATLAS.ti. How(
ever, the Twitter posts could not be processed in the same way, and had to be spliced together from
screenshots, creating image files which were then saved as PDF documents, to be uploaded into AT(
LAS.ti. Obviously no quotes could be extracted as text from the Image-to-PDF Tweets, which proved to
be a difficult but not impossible challenge.
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Figure 3: Examples of a Codes-Primary Documents Table
LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Successes Of This Process
In the opinion of the author, the successes of this process far outweighed the challenges. The student
was introduced to a new tool, opening countless opportunities to him in future research and possibly
professionally as well, as he has already identified a possible gap for companies to use ATLAS.ti in
streamlining their marketing endeavors.
Through this process, the author gained insight into the way students perceive research, which will defin(
itely prove to be helpful in future interactions with students. Also, the skills gained from managing this
process – both the challenges and successes, will be applied when introducing other academics and stu(
dents to this tool.
Finally, the student was also able to answer his research question and sub-questions with conclusions
drawn from the analysis of the ATLAS.ti-coded Facebook and Twitter posts, proving that this tool can in
fact produce insight into the conversations that customers are having with businesses, and with each
other.
Reflection And Final Comments
This paper discussed the use of ATLAS.ti as a tool to aid organizations in analyzing customer interactions
on Social Media platforms, specifically focusing on Facebook and Twitter, and also offered a reflection on
the challenges that were faced and successes that were had in using ATLAS.ti for this specific purpose,
while introducing a novice researcher to the tool for the first time.
As mentioned by Smit (2003), when using computer aided text analysis, the researcher needs to appreci(
ate that computers are not capable of comprehending or discerning meaning of words or constructs, as
their real strength and contribution lies in ordering, structuring, retrieving and visualising tasks. ATLAS.ti
as a tool in the process of analyzing Social Media interaction plays on all these strengths, to ultimately al(
low companies to monitor customer interaction on these sites, which could produce market intelligence
and insights and could allow companies to "amplify positive messages, correct inaccuracies, and mitigate
damage" (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010).
Social Media interaction offers a valuable insight into the workings of the minds of consumers, and if
tools such as ATLAS.ti are effectively utilised to harvest this insight, businesses may soon find themselves
no longer struggling, but thriving in this emerging complex, consumer empowered environment. Teach(
ing young researchers how to utilise a tool such as ATLAS.ti to accomplish this, is the first step in revolu(
tionising the way businesses view Social Media interaction.
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LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING: ATLAS.TI AND SOCIAL MEDIA
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Andrea Potgieter
Department of Information & Knowledge Management, University of Johannesburg. Email: [email protected]
Article Information
This article is published at the Digital Repository of Technische Universität Berlin, URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-
44230, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-44230. It is part of ATLAS.ti User Conference 2013 :
Fostering Dialog on Qualitative Methods, edited by Susanne Friese and Thomas Ringmayr. Berlin: Universitätsverlag
der TU Berlin, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7983-2692-7 (composite publication), URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-51577,
http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-51577
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