Social Media:

One of the most important part which is associated with the lifestyle of the people of current generation is the social media. The modern generation is applying the presence of the social media in every aspect of their day to day life. The social media is a computer mediated technologies which helps in the interaction between different individuals. The process of the social media enables the individuals to share different information technology, idea, future interests and other expressions through different virtual communities and the networks. According to many critics, it is considered as a software based tool which is responsible for the rapid growth of the mobile application and information technology industry and that is visible from its capability of sharing the images, audios, files and videos.

The usage of social media is instrumental in reducing the critical issues like cultural differences, the need of the information transfer on emergency basis and the promotion of the business events.

The cultural differences is a significant barrier in the integration of the people who are considered as outsiders of the culture to that particular culture. The social media as a research method for the particular case has significant role to play as the features of the mentioned concept is instrumental is eliminating the different aspects of the culture shock. The cultural shock or the cultural difference generally highlights the difference between the individuals regarding the language, way of living, culture and societal associations. The impact of the social media in reducing these effects is visible with the scope of it in integrating people of different background, race, or language. The features like sharing of the images, videos or messaging of the different virtual communities are impeccable in creating a friendship or a connection between the individuals of different culture.

Along with this the social media has a significantly fast approach in terms of sharing important information which on emergency basis is highly helpful as the individuals standing at different corners of the globe will be able to effectively communicate with the availability of the strong evidences for any sort of crucial decision making. In this case social media eliminates the wastage of time in a significant manner as it takes incredibly less amount of time compared to the conventional methods of information sharing.

The mentioned research method has incredible significance in case of providing the scope of promotional activities to the business organizations for their products or the services. It is observed that the modern generation is getting significantly tech savvy and the business organizations, following the conventional method of business conduction or specifically marketing is facing a significant gap in terms of promoting their products or services to the targeted customers. The social media is providing them with the perfect opportunity to follow their customers so that their product gets the desired market limelight. The promotional events in the various social media platforms is enabling the organizations to attract the customers more than the conventional method of promotions. Hence the concept is able to reduce the mentioned gap between the promotional activities and the tech savvy customers.

Case Study:

The case study is considered to be a research method for an in depth analysis for a particular event and it is also considered to be the formal research of the events. An in depth analysis of the term case study will provide the assessment of the fact that it is study of a particular event which is considered as the case. Along with this the definition of the particular term can also be specified as a process of research of the events that may be commercial or non-commercial. From the analysis of the case study, the researcher will get an absolute idea of the facts and figures and the series of events happening. This will be helpful for him or her in case of evaluating the context of that particular event, the reason behind the occurrence of that event and the responsible parties in the occurrence of the events. The different types of the case studies are there which illustrative, exploratory, cumulative and critical instance are. Depending on the type of the case study, the researcher is able analyse the context of a merger between two or many organizations, the background of the formation of a competitive market strategy, the change analysis and the leadership attributes in leading the change. The above mentioned contexts are all organizational. Apart from this, the case study is also helpful in case of analysing the non-profitable cases.

One of the examples where the case study is a method of research will be case a merger between two organizations are portrayed. The organizations are BioHealth and Dewaal which went on to form a single entity when the leaders of the organization Steve Lindell and Kaspar Van De Velde decided to merge the organization. The post-merger condition of the merged organization was full of conflicts and uncertainty which the case study analysis is able to portray with significant clarity. The organization observed indecisiveness of the leaders in case of sensing the urgency, the proper method of future decision making regarding the employees of the merged organization, the reduction of the cultural shock among the employees of the two organizations along with no proper benchmarking for the existing employee benefits which will give them an idea about the necessary activities for the retention. All these aspects of the conflict, that was present in the merged organization, was only visible with the research following the case study method. The list of deliverables by the case study also provided the need of an external consultant who will be able to set the benchmark for the employees along with unbiased the assessment of the performances of the different departments and employees.

Content Analysis:

Content Analysis is significantly important research method in the evaluation of the documents and in the assessment of the outcomes of the communication. The communication or the documents can be in the form of text, pictures or videos. The non-invasive nature of the content analysis is regarded as one of the prime advantage of it in case of analysing social phenomena. Different researchers choose different techniques for the contents analysis to primarily answer six questions which are which are the data to be analysed, the definition of the data, the population from which the data is drawn, the relevant context, the boundaries of the analysis along with idea of the measurement. The type of texts that is acknowledged by the content analysis are written, oral, iconic, audio-visual and hyper texts where the written text are generally the books or the papers, the oral text are the communication or speech of individuals, the iconic texts are the drawing or the paintings, the audio-visual are the movies or the videos and the hypertext acknowledges the texts which is generally found on internet. The modern day research on this method is significantly approaching the computer based techniques in order to produce systematic analysis of the open ended interview questions, medical records or newspaper articles. As the contents of the communication is readable machine texts, it can be analysed against specified codes and frequencies for the construction of the inferences. It is also considered as a descriptive approach for the research of the communication. The method is also able to specify the several events like violence or health related behaviour and along with that many critics even acknowledged the method of being capable enough to cover the important social and political issues.

The smooth conduction of the content analysis is significantly achieved with the creation of the criteria of selection which can be consists of three classes and they are common classes, special classes, theoretical classes. The common classes are known to be the general categories for the analysis whereas the special classes incorporates the distinguishable labels. This is instrumental in highlighting a section from the others. The theoretical classes are considered to be classes which evolves from the analysis of the data and the production of the key linkages and the patterns.

The major limitations of the content analysis is that the analysis is considerably descriptive in nature. Along with this, the content analysis generally incorporates the evaluation of the secondary data and that may or may not satisfy the actual requirement of the researcher every time. Apart from that the research on the secondary data will include significant amount restriction owing to the deviation from the actual assessments generated from the primary data.

One of the examples where the content analysis is a method of research will be the encoding of the information in the military operations. The confidentiality of the information that are exchanged by the different agencies in place for the military operations are significantly boosted by the content analysis where the coded data are encoded by applying different content analysis techniques.

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