Lately, I've been noticing a trend in market research -- implementation of social media platforms such as Pinterest to conduct qualitative research online. It's been highlighted in this Quirks article, but I've also come across this topic in other online MR conversations. I see how this seems easy, useful, and innovative to some, but I worry that it's a bit shortsighted.
While I wholeheartedly agree that researchers need to reach and interact with respondents in ways applicable to what they do online and also find the use of imagery in research powerful I see issues with just turning to a social media platform as a research tool. For one, this type of integration between a social media platform and research is time consuming and only seems to work on a few people at a time. The researcher needs to train each respondent on the platform so they are correctly pinning images. Also, the respondent then needs to go out and find each image which can potentially result in them not thinking broadly enough about the topic or even becoming distracted from the task. Many Pinners know how tempting it can be to continue clicking through links! But even more importantly, this does not allow us to engage a higher number of respondents, apply certain analytics or control for bias.
Using technologies not intended for research purposes tends to leave a lot of opportunity on the table. I think research should invest more in developing its own technologies keeping methodologies and best practices in mind.