Interpretive Netnography — Online Community Research through an Interpretivist Lens

Interpretive netnography applies Kozinets' netnographic method within an explicitly interpretivist epistemological framework. The researcher immerses in online communities — social media, forums, blogs, or brand communities — to understand how members co-construct meaning, identity, and culture through digital interaction. Unlike positivist content analysis, interpretive netnography foregrounds the researcher's situated reading of online texts and privileges thick, contextualised meaning-making over frequency counts or variable measurement.