KM in international developmentTools & methods
Hiding in plain sight. A qualitative, text-based method for the analysis of websites
By Sarah Cummings, Bruce Boyes, Nyamwaya Munthali, and Rocio Sanz
- The texts of websites represent a huge resource for research that is rarely used in international development and is only very sparsely used in other fields.
- This method (Figure 1) aims to make the most of the fact that websites provide a huge amount of ‘authentic’, unique, up-to-date, peer reviewed, topical data.
- Some of the challenges and opportunities of using the texts of websites for textual analysis in research are outlined.
- This is followed by a draft protocol for documenting individual pages which overcomes many of these challenges, making websites more accessible for qualitative research and, in particular, for critical discourse analysis2.
- This method can also be employed more widely as a way to document websites which might be under threat of neglect and destruction.
Header image source: Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.
References:
- Cummings, S., Boyes, B., Munthali, N., & Sanz, R. (2026). Hiding in plain sight. A qualitative, text-based method for the analysis of websites. Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 19(1), 58-66. ↩
- Cummings, S., De Haan, L., & Seferiadis, A. A. (2020). How to use critical discourse analysis for policy analysis: a guideline for policymakers and other professionals. Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 15(1), 99-108. ↩
