Gruppendiskussionen in Internetforen

As it is widely acclaimed, the “Web 2.0” offers many opportunities for qualitative research. While qualitative online research is mainly associated with ethnographic approaches, this article is concerned with online focus groups. In particular, the new opportunities and challenges presented by conducting focus groups via message boards will be discussed. As a starting point, the basic differences between face-to-face and several online focus groups are outlined. The bulk of this article focuses on three distinctive features of message board focus groups and their methodological consequences. These are the written form and the lack of non-verbal cues, the asynchronous mode of communication and the technique of multithreading. Finally, it is shown that focus groups via message boards are rather to be treated as an alternative approach to social reality than as a variant of conventional focus groups. They generate data of a particular type which can be especially valuable for narrative and discursive approaches.