Day 1 - Data analysis

It's time to get down to the nitty gritty. I am using a case study methodology to study a complex, contemporary phenomenon within its real life context. It's an exploratory case study design - so I am not looking to prove or disprove a hypothesis and am flexible with regards to the analysis style at this stage - could be interpretational, structural or reflective. The primary source of data are individual's wall postings on the Nestle Facebook Fan Page from 17 March (the launch of the next phase of Greenpeace's anti-Nestle campaign) and 17 May (when Greenpeace declares victory after Nestlé announced it would stop using all products that come from rainforest destruction).
     To increase validity and reliability I am attempting to be systematic in collecting the data of Facebook. As expected it is a time consuming and laborious process. The posts are over 6 months old now and while are still available for viewing, are buried deep within the platform and are hard to get at. Also the some posts need to be expanded to include commentary that has been condensed. One particularly controversial post has generated over 250 responses. Have expanded and printed out this particular thread as significant as it has been quoted many times in blogs and media during the controversy. 
     Finally manage to scrape, cut and paste all postings during the timeframe I've indicated into a word document. It is 798 pages long and contains about 1.5 million characters. This is much longer than anticipated. Hesitant about printing all this out as it seems to be a real waste of paper, especially as I don't have a double sided printer. But word document is quite unmanageable and crashes from time to time! In the name of science I am afraid it will have to be done...


Here is a quick snapshot of the number of posts: