Netnography is a "form of qualitative research that seeks to understand the cultural experiences that encompass and are reflected within the traces, practices, networks and systems of social media".
In netnography, a significant amount of the data originates in and manifests through the digital traces of naturally occurring public conversations recorded by contemporary communications networks.
It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-person participant observation techniques of anthropology to the study of interactions and experiences manifesting through digital communications (Kozinets 1998).
Netnography was originally developed in 1995 by marketing professor Robert Kozinets as a tool to analyze online fan discussions about the Star Trek franchise.
[2] Netnography combines rich samples of communicative and interactions flowing through the internet: textual, graphic, audio, photographic and & audio-visual.
The difference between netnography and digital ethnography could be seen in several ways, but the most obvious one is the research motivation and methodology determined by the purpose.
In netnography, to find the necessary emotion, the story behind the individuals, the researcher has to have a deep understanding of the culture that surrounds the data that she uses.
However, should there be a substantial number of comments that are using sarcastic language, solely using a machine-generated algorithm will give the wrong conclusion.
One examples of a gold mine is a genuine comment written by a person with a very strong emotions towards the brand either positive or negative.
Since Netnography uses spontaneous data and conducts observation without intruding online users, it is regarded as more naturalistic than other approaches such as interviews, focus groups, surveys and experiments (Kozinets, 2015).
The need to understand the cultural meaning of online communities (e.g., Reddit; LinkedIn) has grown exponentially since the appraisal of Web 2.0 interfaces (i.e., user-generated content), along with other technological advances.
Furthermore, cultural practices within the physical world are extended to, and enhanced by, these online communities, where people can choose a dating partner, learn about a religion and make brand choices, just to name a few examples.
People participating in these online communities often share in-depth insights on themselves, their lifestyles, and the reasons behind the choices they make as consumers (brands, products etc.).
More specifically, this means that the researcher will be able to present an unknown and unseen truth to his/her client (Cayla & Arnold, 2013) so that they are able to make better decisions in engaging with a target community, whether it be in a form of an advertising or a non-profit campaign.
For purposes of precision, some netnographers closely track the amount of text collected and read, and the number of distinct participants.
The limitations of netnography draw from the need for researcher interpretive skill, and the lack of informant identifiers present in the online context that can lead to difficulty generalizing results to groups outside the sample.
[4] Netnography is still a relatively new method, and awaits further development and refinement at the hands of a new generation of Internet-savvy ethnographic researchers.