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Introduction

Both videography and netnography contain relatively new practices for collecting and analysing data that can be used for formative research in social marketing. They also offer new opportunities for presenting research that can potentially reach a broad audience, including ordinary consumers. The two approaches have much in common, and it would be no overstatement to suggest, as we will in what follows, that some of their principles, origins, and characteristics overlap.

Videography and netnography both derive from the time-tested anthropological technique of ethnography. Although videography is centred upon audiovisual images, and netnography upon online data, both are grounded in and emanate from the practice of participant observation, with all of its attendant opportunities and strictures. In this sense, the ‘-ography’ of both techniques is a link to their common origins in both anthropology and ethnography. Second, videography and netnography are grounded more than most techniques in observation and, as often applied in business fields such as marketing, the techniques tend to tip the ethnographic balance more to observation than to participation. Third, both techniques rely upon technology: videography upon video cameras and netnography upon networked digital communication devices. Fourth, both approaches converge in digital spaces such as YouTube and Vimeo, where audiovisual data can be the subject of online investigation, and in documentary treatments of online cultural topics such as the Life 2.0, which presents an examination and treatment of people’s cultural experiences and interaction in Second Life. And beyond sharing technological characteristics, both netnography and videography share axiological aspirations that make them particularly relevant for social marketing and social marketing research purposes. That is, both videography and netnography have been found to be more emotionally resonant with, and accessible to, their audiences. This final characteristic of the two research approaches may distinguish them from more traditional academic approaches which tend to exclude wider audiences and mass distribution.

In this short chapter, we explain the underlying principles and elements of these two approaches to research. Each will be developed in turn, with examples that help to illustrate how the approach works in practice. In the chapter’s concluding section, we will attempt an overview that synthesises the two approaches and consider some of their implications for the practice of social marketing.

Videography

Introduction to Videography

When video graphic methods were first employed in consumer research in a summer-long research trek from coast to coast in the USA in 1986 (in a project called the Consumer Behavior Odyssey, led by Melanie Wallendorf and Russell Belk), we used a heavy ¾″ camcorder with bulky 30-min tapes and a heavy battery pack that had to be carried separately. Today anyone with a smartphone has a far superior technology that can also be used for video editing and posting to the internet. In fact, a breakout hit film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival was shot almost entirely on iPhone 5S devices with a supplemental lens, off-camera microphones, and an US$8 app called Filmic Pro. The documentary film, Tangerine, is about transgender prostitutes and probably could not have been made with more obtrusive conventional film equipment.

Another testimony to the opportunities for video is the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) Film Festival that has been held each year since 2001 when it was initiated by the two co-authors. After running the Festival in conjunction with the association’s annual conference for 10 years, we passed it into the very capable hands of Marylouise Caldwell and Paul Henry at the University of Sydney. Among the other innovations they have added to the Film Festival is the site ‘Films by Consumer Researchers’ (https://vimeo.com/groups/136972) on which films and trailers of films juried into the Festival or which have appeared in any of several special DVD and/or online issues of what are normally print journals can be included on the site. Several of the films and trailers on that site provide good examples of social marketing research, including:

  • “I’m Struggling: Men’s Stories of Mental Health”

  • “Changing Consumer Behavior in Diet and Health”

  • “Walk the Talk: Living Positive with AIDS”

  • “Respect and the Media: A Generational View”

  • “A Right to Life: Reducing Maternal Deaths in Pakistan”

Videographic studies with a social marketing purpose have also been conducted in an Australian Aboriginal context with careful attention to respect Aboriginal law, rights, and traditions (e.g. Belk et al. 2000; Kariippanon et al. 2015).

A Videographic Case Study

We may take one of the films referenced above, made by Steve Watson, Paul Henry, and Marylouise Caldwell in 2007, as a case study of how this medium can be used not only for research but also as an action-oriented technique for precipitating social behaviours on the part of stakeholders—in this case the medical and government officials of Pakistan. The film focuses on Dr. Shershah Syed, an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in Karachi who has valiantly struggled to save women and babies who lack maternal and hospital care. He also trains 75 midwives each year, as well as medical technicians, operating room technicians, and female health workers. Tens of thousands of deaths in childbirth and hundreds of thousands of severe injuries occur in Pakistan each year due to lack of medical attention. Dr. Syed has selflessly struggled to provide care for impoverished women living in urban slums and rural areas who would not otherwise have access to medical attention. But he nevertheless wound up losing his hospital position, apparently because of jealous government officials.

The film calls attention to his heroic struggles, successful interventions, and Dr. Syed’s job loss. In a January, 2013 talk at Oxford, he said, ‘It is sad, due to a lack of education, we give cattle higher care compared to poor women.’ In September, 2015, the High Court of Pakistan finally called for a government response to allegations that poor women in Pakistan are turned away and denied medical care because they lack money for doctor and hospital fees. Not only has the film had an impact in Pakistan, it has won both the People’s Choice and Jurors’ prizes at the ACR film festival. One unusual evidence of the impact of the film is that we have watched ACR Film Festival audience members pass out while watching the birth scenes in the movie. That of course, is not the intent of the film, but is rather dramatic testimony to the opportunity for film to have an emotional impact that is impossible with normally dry academic prose.

Advantages and Uses of Videographic Methods

Besides its emotional impact as a presentation medium, videography in consumer and social marketing research has several other benefits. It allows researchers to capture detailed observations as well as depth interview data. Even though audio recording can capture what people say, it cannot capture how they say it. Video can do this as well as preserve audio and visual details for later analysis. For example, how do parents interact with their children in a learning situation? Do they praise, critique, help, demonstrate, or merely passively observe? What are effective strategies for getting children involved in improving the healthiness of their family meals (see the “Changing Consumer Behavior” video noted above)? Besides reaching a potentially much broader audience, as noted in the abstract, video can communicate in a more compelling manner, even with those who are pre-literate or illiterate. It is a chance for researchers to communicate more effectively, whether the audience is students, the general public, managers, or others. Recent studies of anthropologically oriented market research agencies by Julien Cayla, Robin Beers, and Eric Arnould finds that video graphic storytelling is a highly effective way of impacting clients and that a well-edited film has much longer staying power in an organisation than a written report.

The editing of video is a skill the researcher can develop or a task that can be turned over to others. Control is greatest when the researcher also does the editing, and basic editing skills can be quickly learned. One demonstration of this claim is the fact that the majority of filmmakers in the ACR Film Festival have been first time videographers and editors. Today’s editing packages, including those that come free from operating system providers or are available as inexpensive smartphone apps, are so powerful and engaging to use that most of those who try them are quickly hooked on doing their own editing. An awareness of editing choices also makes researchers more sensitive to capturing field material that will be beneficial later in editing.

Filming also requires some learning, but as the number of films on both Vimeo and YouTube demonstrates, it is something that hundreds of thousands of people are now not only doing, but also perfecting and putting up online. Nevertheless, there are things that filmmakers can do to enhance the quality and impact of their videos:

  • Place the camcorder, DSLR camera, or smartphone on a tripod

  • Use an off-camera microphone

  • In interviews, use a camera operator/sound technician other than the person doing the interview

  • Because ‘talking head’ video is boring, capturing lots of action, cutaways, and ‘B-roll’ material

  • Shooting ratios vary, but plan on shooting at least 10 min of video for every minute of edited video

  • Twenty minutes is more common time for films that have appeared in the ACR Film Festival

  • Still photos can also be made to be compelling, especially by panning and zooming them with the help of editing software

With millions of CCTV cameras around the world accessible online as well as thousands of hours of archival video on YouTube, Vimeo, and sites like Rick Prelinger’s archive of industrial films, there is also a wealth of already captured video that is most often freely available for use in your video. It is also possible to call up live images from thousands of CCTV cameras around the world as well as uploaded shots from the dash-cams consumers are increasingly using in cars and taxis. Another technique that is often effective is to give the participants the camcorders to record their own material for the researchers. Patricia Cunningham and Rita Denny of Practica, an anthropological research agency based in New York City and Chicago, have used this method frequently. For example they gave camcorders to college students going out to bars on weekends—venues where the researcher would likely be a ‘fifth wheel’. They found that these young consumers typically ordered ‘good’ or expensive beers early in the evening when they felt they could best appreciate them. Later in the evening as their senses were dulled by previous drinking, they turned to less expensive beers.

Videographic research need not be made into a film output for a film festival or journal in order to be useful and provide unique insights. Macy’s department store analysed their ‘surveillance’ video footage in order to understand why the merchandise placed on an aisle gondola wasn’t selling, even though past experience suggested higher sales with this merchandising technique. They found that the aisle was on a path from a store entry door and was too narrow. As a result, shoppers who stopped at the display experienced an average of two ‘butt brushes’ from other shoppers passing by, before they too quickly moved on. Although such surveillance footage is the property of the store and can be legally used for research purposes, further ethical issues emerge when it is combined with facial recognition software and used to monitor the shopping patterns of particular consumers, conceivably also tying into their credit card expenditures in the store previously. This is less of an issue if consumers are not individually identified and only aggregate traffic patterns in-store are analysed, but issues of reasonable expectations of privacy remain. Imagine, for example, if camera footage was analysed from store dressing rooms where shoppers try on clothing.

Videography Challenges and Opportunities

There are other special issues or problems to overcome in doing video graphic research. People may be more self-conscious if a video camera is present, although with so much self-videotaping and photographing today, this is a lessening concern in most contexts. Where sensitivity is found, prolonged engagement with the participants can be a big rapport-builder rather than showing up with cameras rolling. Where identifying participants is an issue because they wish to remain anonymous, it is possible to silhouette them through backlighting or to pixelate their faces in editing. Informed consent should always be obtained. We like to do this in two stages. Before filming consumers we carefully explain our purpose and what we hope to do. We then get their permission to film, but not necessarily to use the video. After filming, when participants know what has transpired, they can knowledgeably sign off on allowing various uses of the video. We allow them to choose among options such as: only the researchers may view the film, researchers and students can watch it, other academics can also see it, or it can be broadcast on television or placed on the internet. If the nature of the film treatment is a concern to participants, we also let them see the finished product before asking their final permission. They can request further edits or deny permission to use the film at any stage. Collaborative video making with those being studied is another possibility that further respects the rights and viewpoints of research participants. And short of that, video elicitation in which participants are shown videos of themselves in action can be an effective means to stimulate informative interviews that can help in interpreting what has been filmed. It also makes for a comfortable interviewing situation because researcher and participant are both watching the video rather than staring at each other.

As with other ethnographic research, the analysis of audiovisual data also requires coding as part of the sense making process. While still evolving, one thing we encourage experimenting with is direct coding of film material rather than transcribing it into words and then coding the resulting transcripts. The reason is that transcribing loses the very data that makes film so compelling. It loses not only the action and detail of the visual material, but also the tone and nuances of the verbal material. There are several commercial programs available that allow direct coding of AV material, including nVivo, ATLAS.ti, and MAXQDA. In addition a free Microsoft program called OneNote can do something similar. In each case when a coded category is clicked, the full video segments coded emerge on the computer screen rather than simple text transcriptions. As with other qualitative data, further analysis and interpretation is needed as well as thought about how a video output might be made with this material. Something of this process is also followed in editing video in that video, audio, and still photographic materials are captured in segments that can have a code description attached and that can then be pulled into the emerging video and audio timeline where they can be further trimmed, rearranged, and otherwise altered in putting together the video.

There are also technical, video graphic, editing, musical permissions, and other issues and skills that may be needed in producing an effective film. These are learnable skills and some, like obtaining musical permissions, can be circumvented by using free applications like the music-generating Garage Band app by Apple. We find that because the process or making a film is so engaging for researchers, different forms of experimentation and creativity emerge freely. For most technical questions, there is probably a video available online that will show how to do it, whether it is improving sound quality, fixing colour balance, inserting titles or translations, or structuring a film. There is always more to learn, including how to create a more dramatically effective film, but that too can be part of the fun. A more difficult issue is often how to make a film that is not only descriptive and dramatically compelling, but that also advances theoretical understanding. One thing that is clear is that trying to structure a film like an academic paper with literature review, references, and complex models of findings, is seldom an effective strategy. It is better to stick to simpler theoretical points that are clearly and compellingly demonstrated, probably with titles or voiceovers, but ideally with minimal help for an audience that can reach its own conclusions, sometimes after being presented with multiple possible points of view and interpretations. Just as a novel that is turned into a feature film necessarily presents a story differently than the book does, so a film has different strengths and weaknesses than a journal article. No one wants to replicate the often boring and didactic educational films they may have seen in school. Nor do we want to go to the other extreme and emulate the goofiest of YouTube films just to be entertaining. We regard the question of theoretical contribution in film as an area that most filmmakers are still struggling and experimenting with. But that is part of the creative challenge with film.

In a broader sense, videography can also include researching videos that have been made by others, including documentary films, consumer-produced films, ethnographic anthropological films, television advertising archives, and various online archives as noted above. For example, YouTube has more than 50 million hours of video uploaded every year. Fortunately these videos are tagged and searchable. That means if you want to know what popular Christmas gifts were this past year, how people celebrate weddings in Vietnam or India, or what makes for a popular ‘unboxing video’ (in which consumers unpack and reveal some new product), it is easy to find such content. Because video archives go back to the early days of film, it is possible to do historic research as well as contemporary studies, cultural comparisons, and analyses of both everyday life and special occasions.

We do not recommend that videography be used for every research project, any more than we would advise that experiments, survey research, projective methods, or other data collection methods be used for each and every project that a researcher undertakes. But we do believe that all researchers can benefit from considering video methods as a part of their tool kit for conducting research. We also do not advocate the use of video for all depth interviews. We need to observe what people do as well as what they say. Video can’t see and hear everything, even with multiple camcorders operating simultaneously. But it can preserve a richer set of data than audio recording or un-aided observation. Its uses can range from micro-behavioural analysis of a single person’s gestures to macro-behavioural events that occur among large groups of people over an extended period of time. It can capture behaviours that participants are unable to appreciate or verbalise. For example in one clever study of drinking and music at a bar playing country western music, it was found that, counter to expectations, the slower the musical beat, the more frequently people took a drink. The explanation was that slower songs addressed sadder topics and that it was the sadness evoked, rather than the beat of the music per se that led to the greater incidence of drinking with slow tunes.

Netnography

Introduction to Netnography

Whether we are examining citizens, consumers, managers, government officials, employees, or any of the people and professionals who might affect or be affected by social marketing, we can be nearly certain that online interaction and experience are playing essential and expanding roles in their daily experience of work and the world. When using formative research to reach them for social marketing campaigns, or indeed evaluative research to examine the effects of these initiative, netnography can be a useful tool. As a form of ethnographic research uniquely adapted to the particularities of technologically mediated social interaction in the contemporary world, netnography has some distinct advantages.

Although the approach has its origins in fields related to marketing and consumer research, netnography has developed to become more than this. It can be considered the basis for broader studies of online social interaction and experience that assume a cultural perspective. It is founded in anthropology’s epistemologies of participant-observation and that field’s axiologies of human (and humane) understanding.

Netnography and Other Ethnographies

Netnography is a form of online ethnography. Netnography is related to Hine’s (2015) virtual ethnography but distinct from it. Virtual ethnography is ethnography that explores the social landscapes that emerge through and around the internet, but may not be contained within it; many of the practices of virtual ethnography involved how embedded, embodied, and every day the internet has become. Digital ethnographies are similarly broad, and can encompass, for example, fieldwork among software programmers and people who work on networked workstation.

Netnography focuses on online interactions and experience. It is not limited to online data, but it must utilise a preponderance of this type of data. It also does not limit itself to data from the internet, but also includes mobile and apps. The use of the term ‘netnography’ also connotes a particular affiliation with a set of research practices identified as ethnographic. Locating studies within, using, and perhaps even expanding upon and developing the established standards of netnography confers upon present studies a future consistency they might not otherwise hold. However, this is not to deny the dynamism of netnography. As the internet changes, as people’s use of it changes, as its use of people changes, the method must adapt to these contingencies. Where once upon a time studies using the method would be focused on text from Friendster, MySpace and bulletin boards, studies conducted today might focus mainly on photographs from SnapChat and Instagram apps, and tomorrow they might be concerned with something entirely different, such as biometric information from wearable applications. As is manifest in ethnography itself, data sources change and adapt, data gathering, analysis, and representational practices alter to emphasise and capture particular elements previously obscure or under-realised, but the core of the method stays the same.

As with virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and all forms of online ethnography, netnography’s relation to its ethnographic orientations and aims remains at the centre of the practice: it is about participant observation, no more and no less. Netnography takes participant observation and specifically adapts its data collection, data analysis, ethical, and representational practices for the technologically-mediated research task at hand. These practices utilise the communications and information found and created through the internet, including its mobile manifestations. In marketing and consumer research studies, its field of origin, netnography has been overwhelmingly employed to understand the collective online behaviours, conversations, languages, meaning making and symbolic repertoires of different groups of consumers.

There are six main differences between online and face-to-face sociality that netnographic practices holds to be important (from Kozinets 2015, pp. 72–75):

  • Alteration. Communication changes based on medium, such as the common and changing language of Snapchat user’s poses and captions, or food image posters shared practices.

  • Access. Technology provides different levels of social access. Existing friends communicate more frequently and with more emotional range. Close family members may be locked out of key communication channels because of their hardware ownership and levels of software fluency. Online interactions can be more important than embodied ones.

  • Archiving. Online communications are often stored and archived automatically. Research, intelligence, and everyday social life become radically altered when interactions are archived, easily shared, and create lasting records.

  • Analysis. New technologies provide various ways to analyse and visualise data. Researchers have far more ways to search for, code, analyse, and be hopelessly inundated with social information than ever before. There are massive challenges as well as opportunities in the digitization of social space.

  • Approach. These changes to social interaction raise a range of novel ethical, legal, and social questions relating to our research approach. Who owns the information? To what uses can it legally and morally be put? When are interactions public and when are they private? Can we ever really ensure anonymity any more, and do we need to? Our legal and moral codes are bursting under the weight of technocultural change. For the past two decades, netnographers have been at the forefront of those asking these sorts of questions, and offering (often difficult) answers to them.

  • Affiliations. The final difference has a direct bearing upon social marketing concerns. It looks at the importance and impact of large corporate, governmental, and organisational interests on the social interaction occurring online. How does marketing impact the online social experience? How do corporate affiliations affect the gathering of personal information which netnography also partakes within? How does government surveillance impact it? What are the wider social ramification of such developments on families, relationships, institutions, occupations, and human society itself? What are the broader implications of the intense and prolonged colonization of online experience and interaction by companies and governments, and what can we, as researchers, do about it?

Netnographic Research Practices

Traditional ethnographic practices of performing cultural entrée, keeping field notes, conducting personal and group interviews, creating and interpretation, and ensuring consent and a fair and honest cultural representation are maintained within netnography in adapted forms dealt with in some detail elsewhere (see Kozinets 2002, 2010). New research practices and new amalgams of extant and developing practices have also been added as netnography continues to develop and be adapted to the investigatory tasks at hand. These procedures include those which are used for:

  1. 1.

    finding online field sites in order to pursue particular research questions and topics of interest;

  2. 2.

    handling the challenges of working with large sets of downloaded digital data;

  3. 3.

    navigating the uncharted shoals of online ethics and, most recently;

  4. 4.

    dealing with the public aspects of netnographic participation and examination.

In the current social media age, netnography takes on a more activist role than ever before. In humanist netnography in particular, a notion that deliberately defies definition while it draws both from humanism as philosophy and the humanities as social practice, researcher immersion becomes linked to engagement in efforts for social change and human betterment. This takes place as the academic uses her or his privileged position in society as an authority and an influencer in order to gain media attention, build legitimacy and trust, and attempt to have a positive influence on relevant social affairs (see Kozinets 2015, pp. 263–276).

In contemporary netnography, the concept of a field site becomes decentred. What were formerly stable sites can be composed of particular topics uniting many disparate only addresses and postings, particular individuals, or groups of individual social media names. The formerly bounded physical field site may in fact no longer exist, not even in the allegedly ‘real’ ‘embodied’ world. Communications have opened up extended and expanded possibilities for social being that transcend skin-encapsulated existence, as the recent and fairly extensive literature studying virtual worlds such as Second Life attests (see Boellstorff 2008; Boellstorff et al. 2012). However, manifestations of online community appear to remain salient to many types of human endeavour, even for the most physical of activities. For instance, the many drug user forums which were referenced previously can be important sites of investigation, as can the many forums and sites dedicated to a range of social topics, from obesity and spousal abuse to anorexia and advocacy for criminal acts. Recently, Berdychevsky and Nimrod (2015) used a yearlong netnography of seniors’ online communities to discover the characteristics of their sex-related discussions, finding that humour and peer-to-peer based education were frequently used, that the forum sometimes appeared to lead to new sexual behaviours (such as experimenting with sex toys and oral sex) and that the discussions themselves were found to be a leisure activity related to sex. A range of resources are available for consumers to learn about various topics with strong social implications. The same set of resources is open for the social marketing researcher and campaign planner.

The evolving set of netnographic research practices includes the use of search engines to locate particular sorts of information, as well as the use of different types of communication channels. Search engines that are used in netnography are often popular and familiar, such as Google. Sometimes, customised and specialised search engines and filtering or mining software might be developed, as with digital netnography and its use of data science directed by cultural understanding and naturalistic inquiry. Netnography often proceeds with special websites created to provide a controlled and ethical domain for the research interaction. These websites can sit as sites on the internet, as blogs, or be centred within social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook.

In order to choose netnographic sites as part of a research study, investigators should look for places where interaction or experience occur that:

  • are directly relevant to the study’s research question, orientation, or its topic;

  • have a substantial amount of seemingly relevant data, be it textual, visual, or otherwise;

  • offer a larger number rather than smaller number of discrete message posters;

  • provide the researcher with a sense of activity and liveliness, giving the impression of a social place where something is happening;

  • show postings and other data that is recent (if currency is relevant);

  • provide social interactions that are more detailed or descriptively rich;

  • offer a more welcoming and friendly atmosphere and thus one in which interpersonal contact might be pursued and;

  • exhibit interactions where one poster responds to another, and another responds to them, creating a flow of conversation.

Data in netnography assume three principal formats. These are archival data, co-created data, and field note data. Archival data about particular sites, topics, and people can often be in extensive, and in netnography its capture, saving (in text files, visual screenshots of computer and mobile phones, and downloaded data or audio-visuals captures or streams), storing, and analysis is often important. Archival data is important because it pre-dates the netnographic exploration and does not involve the netnographer’s involvement. The next type of data is created by the interaction of the netnographer with people and site. This second type results from the researcher’s elicitation, interview, conversation or other social interchange between the netnographic researcher and relevant persons, software agents, or other actors. The third, and perhaps most distinguishing type of netnographic data is field note. These data are created by the netnographer. They are first-hand observations about her netnographic participation as well as reflections on her research-related interactions and experiences, as they affect her entire lifeworld, both on the screen and in all embodied practice. Keeping field notes is important to netnographic research practice. It is the reflection of the participative side of participant-observation. It is also a key methodological affordance that draws attention to the human-technology-human interaction that underpins some of the core foci of netnography. Once data are collected, a battery of both familiar and novel analytic techniques including data visualisation, social network analysis, and conceptual mapping can be marshalled to foster improved human understanding (see Kozinets 2015).

Netnographic Research for Formative Social Marketing Research

Within the growing bank of netnographic studies lie many applications of the method to questions of social marketing, both in its formative as well as its evaluative phases. In one of the earliest applications, Sandlin (2007, p. 288) found that netnography ‘is a helpful research tool for consumer education researchers who are interested in capturing and critically examining the education and learning occurring in informal sites of consumer education, especially in online communities.’ Shortly after this, Berger et al. (2008) used netnography to understand the role and meaning of sports to adolescents. Seeing these meanings revealed in online narratives, they found sports articulated through ‘a complicated picture of stress, social role conflict and susceptibility to external influence’ (Berger et al. 2008, p. 277). Applying the netnography as type of formative social marketing research, they unpacked from the research a range of implications for future programs that could speak to adolescents about sports participation in ways that used appropriate communications media and ‘fit into their time stressed, multi-tasked lives’ (p. 303).

Netnography has been used to understand religious conversion by Rhazzali (2015). The author researched online conversions to Islam and discovered how ‘the logic of the web’ played ‘an essential role in the construction of the religious message.’ Following narrowcast media practices, online religious evangelists customised their messages, following a type of social marketing procedure of their own. Rhazzali also found in his netnography that those seeking converts to Islam were also employing methods ‘typical of promotional campaigns, such as highlighting the individual benefits of choosing Islam, or using testimonials as examples’ (ibid).

In a particularly apt book chapter based upon a conference presentation, Ulosoy (2012) argues that netnography is particularly useful, relevant, effective, and fruitful for undertaking formative social marketing research because it renders accessible the perceptions, issues, and groups which often concern social marketing. As Kozinets (2015) notes, netnography has been found particularly useful for studying sensitive and controversial issues in an ethical and humane manner. For instance, Van Hout and Hearne (2015) studied the recreational use of dimethylamylamine (DMAA) by members of the recreational drug community, as discussed in various online centres of interaction. As another good example of this use of netnography for revealing data that would otherwise be very difficult to discern, see how Bakken (2015) uses netnography to study online “cryptomarkets” such as Silk Road which sell and educate people about the availability of black market goods such as guns, illegal drugs, and even trafficked human beings. Among the netnographies currently published, there are many such investigations of clandestine, stigmatic, or otherwise hidden phenomena. Although it is beyond the scope of this short, shared chapter to do so, each and every one of these investigations has potentially valuable insights that can be used to create social marketing campaigns as well as to further social marketing or transformative consumer research.

Videography, Netnography, and the Future of Formative Social Marketing Research

As we have discussed in this chapter, videography and netnography are united as techniques which offer a seemingly less obtrusive, observational and naturalistic alternative to many other formative social marketing research techniques. Both videography and netnography depend upon digital technology for their data collection, rely on curatorial techniques that are often rendered opaque, and provide research outputs that offer different forms of representing knowledge to various research stakeholders, whether they are located in public, markets, organisations, or regulatory agencies. We have argued for the new opportunities that these two techniques present to potentially reveal, help understand, and reach out to broader audiences. In this concluding section, we speculate about the potential of the two techniques as they continue to combine and expand.

In the marketing, business, and management fields there can often be a tension between the academic tendency to cast a critical eye upon markets, regulators, and corporations and the more pragmatic imperatives of fostering economic productivity and providing students with jobs. Situated firmly within the intersection of these two poles, social marketing attempts to bring together the efficiency of marketing with the lofty aims of social betterment and human welfare.

We might consider how videography and netnography might be used to improve existing social marketing practices. Consider that one of the most damaging critique of AIDS-related social marketing practices in sub-Saharan Africa has been that the campaigns have been largely ignorant of the complex structural and cultural determinants of health-related behaviour and that they exclude genuine community behaviour. Medical anthropologist Pfeiffer (2004, p. 77) argues that the diffusion of social marketing techniques is not driven by demonstrated efficacy, but rather can be attributed ‘to the promotion of privatization and free markets…across the region.’ Social marketing thus becomes like advertising itself—a tool to further capitalist expansion and broadcast the benefits of globalisation in a culturally-insensitive and non-participatory way. It is possible that videography and netnography might be used in ways that could foster more empathic and culturally sensitive approaches to such important social marketing directives as the sub-Saharan AIDS campaign.

Although netnography and videography are techniques that can, like any technique, be used in a variety of different ways, we believe that they can be easily used in more open-ended ways that could promote individual and community participation and dialog. Videography is useful for revealing how groups of people actually behave and how they speak. It reveals the human face of what might otherwise be abstracted as ‘subject’ or ‘consumer’ behaviour. Skilful videography is needed to reveal topics that might be stigmatized or hidden, such as illegal or sexual behaviours. However, when revealed the resulting works are almost without peer in the power of their impact.

Netnography employs the technologies that people use to communicate in order to understand the content and structure of those communications. In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, cell phone ownership is as common as it is in the United States (Pew Internet Report 2015). Research shows that many Africans use their cell phones to get consumption information, get health information, get political news, and take photos, as well as most commonly to send messages. Netnography would study the content of these messages and seek to understand more fully the complexities of communications contexts into which social marketing messages would be cast. Netnography might reveal more easily than many techniques some of the covert notions and behaviours that interest social marketers.

The rich and culturally-embedded data provided by the collection techniques of netnography and videography can also be subject to an analytic focus that pays close attention to the all-important cultural contexts of social change and adoption. In so doing, they can provide formative research to help design campaigns that are not only more participatory, realistic, and open, but also more effective.