As online researchers, we have utilized a set of variables as our overall research approach and design of our study, which has enabled us to garner more insight into the rising trend of Kombucha. These variables include, online research review on how Kombucha has demonstrated itself as an extension of the healthy lifestyle movement, as well as observing (netnography) Kombucha community websites and scraping data from social media platforms, such as Instagram, in order to explore the current conversation that are taking place on subject of Kombucha and how its manifested throughout the web 2.0 landscape.
Online research:
Before conducting our online research, our group has developed a research approach and design as a means to organize our trend analysis, as well as incorporated visual representations of the data we have collected and divided keywords which elaborate on the findings of our literature review.
Our sample for .our online research will include online social media users from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and blogs.Our online research will be at random in order to cultivate diversity in our results. It should be mentioned that as researchers we have positioned ourselves as passive observers, thus any personal information about the social media users we have observed will be disclosed, and only relevant information of our findings will be published.
The basis for our keywords were extracted from the main concepts found in our literature review. Such keywords include: “Healthy lifestyle”, “Probiotics”, “Vegetarianism”,” Farmers Markets”, “Omega-3”, “Probiotics beverages”, “Kombucha”, “Millennial”, “Kombucha blogs”, “Kombucha Benefits”, “Kombucha opinions (Detox-sickness Kombucha)”
Nevertheless, if keywords chosen do not have any significant results, we will adapt our keywords as we go. This technique will allow us to collect the most relevant information necessary in order to answer our research question.
Our online research will include several different social media platforms which are essential tools that will aid to the development of our analysis on how the healthy lifestyle trend is currently evolving. We have also utilized the hashtag function as a means to garner what trends are currently emerging from the web 2.0 landscape, in addition advanced search engines from websites https://tagboard.com and google trend analysis, in order to gain more insight into the conversations online social media users are having about Kombucha. The search engines we have used has enabled us as researchers to scan the online social media environment in real time in order to gage correlating patterns seen with our selection of keywords.
Selected keywords will be dispersed according to each individual social media platform being observed, as a means to foster more diversity in the data we collect, which we will be able to analyze more throughly. Due to our limitations in time, we have selected the most recent and relevant posts uploaded. Locations are another additional variable we will adapt into our search engines, if deemed necessary to our research findings. Adapting locations will provide us with further specificity on locations where Kombucha is most significantly talked about.
Netnography:
Netnography is the process of emerging into an online community and observing the conversations and interaction between the members of the online community in order to discover what is talked about.
The keywords we used were: Kombucha community, Kombucha blogs, Kombucha bar, Kombucha trends, Kombucha home trends,Kombuch DIY, Kombucha flavors, Kombucha health trends, Kombucha diets, Kombucha opinions, Kombucha (dis)advantages, Kombucha satisfaction, Kombucha experience.
We emerged into the forum: Homebrewtalk.com. We took on a non-intrusive observative role trying to disturb the natural conversations as little as possible. Every day we followed what new threads got created and what old threads were responded on. All this data got collected into a table organized by date in appendix 1.The analysis of the data was based on themes and labels. In order to find the labels we printed the data tables and by hand wrote down labels and themes that seemed repetitive. The conversations got ordered by label and category instead of date and the most important content of the conversations got included in the table. We found three main categories that included smaller sub themes we used as labels. The categories we found were Kombucha DIY, Kombucha health and Kombucha recipes. These categories were chosen based on the content of the conversations. Soon as someone discussed the influence of Kombucha on their body and overall state of mind the thread was labeled as part of the category Kombucha health. All threads included both negative and positive responses and hence were labeled with both Kombucha advantages and Kombucha disadvantages. Whenever a conversations was about brewing methods or equipment it became part of the Kombucha DIY category. These conversations got divided over costs, supplies and Kombucha starters. Whenever someone talked about basic Kombucha recipes it got assigned the Kombucha recipes category. Whenever an actual flavor addition got specified or whenever someone asked for flavour advice the thread was labeled with Kombucha flavor. We calculated the frequency of labels and categories repeating which lead to the frequency tables in the netnography chapter of this report.
Data Scraping:
Data Scraping is an effective method which is used to monitor the social media environment regarding a certain trend in in culture, society, business, or science. We had the choice between a variety of scraper for different platforms and we decided to pick the Instagram Hashtag Explorer to research about the Kombucha trend. As the first step, we determined a number of popular hashtags regarding our trend to ensure we collect a large amount of data. First we have chosen to use the hashtag “#Kombucha” which provides us the highest amount of data because it was included in the majority of posts about that trend (417,984 posts). The second hashtag we have chosen, considering prior research on Instagram, was “#Kombuchatea” which is a little bit more specific and focuses on the tea itself. The number of posts in which this hashtag is used is 16,235. Last but not least, we researched the hashtag “#Kombuchalove” which is the third most used hashtag for Kombucha posts (7,872 posts). Through this hashtag, Instagram will provide us with information covering positive associations of consumers with the trend. We concluded that these hashtags would be very interesting for us to analyse because we could find out which other hashtags are used in combination and reveal the connections with other keywords/topics, the image of the trend and the user’s associations. Moreover, we decided to search for tags rather than for locations because of the fact that our research is not focused on a specific geographic location. After searching for these three hashtags, we ended up with a table documenting every post that were published during the last 9 hours. Furthermore, the program provided us with data files we downloaded in order to continue with the visualisation of our data. We used Gephi to create graphs that helped us to analyse the data and extract the most relevant findings. After uploading the data files to Gephi, we needed to follow the instructions to make the graph informative and visually attractive. Additionally, we used the tables provided by Gephi and the Instagram Hashtag Explorer to interpret the different hashtags and connections. We were able to reveal a lot of interesting data which we would have not been able to find through a regular online research. This data helped us to gain an insight about the image of Kombucha which can be related to the healthy lifestyle trend that developed in our society. Furthermore, the connections which Kombucha consumers made with other hashtags were very relevant for us in order to define Kombucha’s target group in more detail and concentrate our research on this specific target group. Through the number of posts and the time when those were published we were able to analyse the popularity and up-to-dateness of the trend. And last but not least, the origin of the Instagram users also gave an idea about how widely this trend is spread around the world.
Kombucha 