CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 163Focus Groups and Qualitative MethodsData Analysis and ArchivingQualitative Research Methods and Ethics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Uncovering longitudinal life narratives: scrolling back on Facebook

Open access
Robards, Brady, Lincoln, Siân·2017·Qualitative Research
DOI 10.1177/1468794117700707
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This article explores the potential role of sustained social media use in longitudinal qualitative research. We introduce the research design and methodology of a research project exploring sustained use (five or more years) of the social network site Facebook among young people in their twenties. By focusing on this group, we seek to uncover how ‘growing up’ stories are told and archived online, and how disclosure practices (what people say and share on social media) change over time. We question how we can understand the ‘digital trace’ inscribed through the Facebook Timeline as a longitudinal narrative text. We argue that ‘scrolling back’ through Facebook with participants as ‘co-analysts’ of their own digital traces can add to the qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) tradition. QLR and the scroll back method attend to a similar set of concerns around change over time, the depth of inquiry, and uncovering rigorous, rich life narratives. We explore limitations (especially around intentionality) and ethical challenges, while also arguing for the inclusion of these often highly personal, deep, co-constructed digital texts in qualitative longitudinal research. We also consider how the scroll back method could apply to other digital media, as the sites and applications that people use diversifies and changes over time.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/1468794117700707

Cites

32 of 32 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 33 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. boyd d, 2011, A Networked Self, 39
  2. Cannarella J, Spechler JA (2014) Epidemiological modeling of online social network dynamics. arXiv. Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4208. · arXiv
  3. Gehl RW, 2014, Reverse Engineering Social Media
  4. Lincoln S, 2016, Journal of Youth Studies, 20, 518
  5. Miller D, 2011, Tales from Facebook

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–162 of 162

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Robards, B., & Lincoln, S.
Affiliations
  • Monash University (AU)
  • Liverpool John Moores University (GB)
Corresponding author
Robards, Brady
ORCID
Venue
Qualitative Research
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2017-04-17
Volume
17
Issue
6
Pages
715-730
ISSN
  • 1468-7941 (ISSN-L)
  • 1741-3109
DOI
10.1177/1468794117700707
OpenAlex
W2605885774
Cited by
163
References
33
Citations by year
2026: 19 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 2
FWCI
21.70
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Qualitative Research (publishedVersion)
  • Liverpool John Moores University (acceptedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Data Analysis and Archiving
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Keywords
Facebook, qualitative longitudinal research, digital traces, life stories, disclosure practices, youth, coming of age, co-analysis, research ethics, social media use

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review