Abstract
Facebook (FB) has increasingly entered the daily lives of Latvians, and, as in other countries, the various virtual communities created within this social network site are directly connected to or even derived from communities existing in the physical world, such as place-based. This article focuses on two such virtual communities that have emerged as groups of residents of Rīga city neighbourhoods, focusing on the analysis of the images posted in these groups. There are several research questions which are centred on the neighbourhood places that are depicted in the FB posts. What do they say about the everyday mobility and borders of the neighbourhood? What places cause joy and worries? How do these visual representations differ in two FB groups? In exploring these questions, both qualitative and quantitative approaches and methods were used. An additional methodological question arose: which of these approaches is the optimal way for such a small-scale ad hoc study? At the end of this pilot study, it was concluded that the visual content (mainly photographs) generated by FB groups of urban residents is a valuable reference material that helps researchers understand specific neighbourhoods as if they were looking through the eyes of residents. Their vision has recorded not only the places of their neighbourhood. Comparing the content of the two FB groups, there are significant differences in this regard. By combining qualitative and quantitative image content analysis, more reliable results can be achieved, but at the same time, quantitative content analysis (both sampling and image coding) require relatively huge resources, especially if the aim is to automate workflow, which raises the question of how rational the use of this or that approach is.
Published Version
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