The transparent nature of SN sites is enabling the researcher to explore online how they are being used by charities and to assess the reaction of users. SN user charity activity will be recorded using data collection templates that will serve to analyse the volumes and type of activity and if and how the activity is contributing to the aims of the charity.
To ensure that the researcher is able to complete the target number of interviews, the researcher will initially contact a long list of 30 charities and 20 agencies via phone and email and follow up with the 6 charities and 5 agencies who agree to an interview within the timescales of the study. If need be, the researcher will approach more organisations in order to meet the target number of interviews. One reason why the charity sector was selected for this study is that there are many of them, 1670 in UK, which means that the researcher will not be limited by the number of organisations to interview. The risk with a study which is dependant on conducting interviews is that organisations may not be willing to participate. However, the researcher believes that as the charities and agencies will see that they stand to gain from the research they will be more willing to invest time. This view has already been verified by a leading marketing agency.
The questionnaires will be used for writing the responses to the questions and where permission is granted and where there is no risk of impacting the quality of responses, an audio recording of the interviews will be made. Data will be synthesised aided by coding techniques (Fisher, 2007).
The process of collecting secondary data will continue into the most pertinent aspects of SN’s and into the charities being interviewed to help corroborate the findings from the interviews.
