I employed the use of the Advanced Search tool on X which conveniently has a dates feature that allowed me to separate my searches for my first and 2nd group for my sampling. Additionally the Advanced Search tool on X allowed me to search keywords, so I searched the key words of “Covid” and “Vaccine” together, “Anti-Vax” and “Anti-Vaccine” to see tweets that pertained to my area of interest, I searched both groups using the same key words. Moreover I utilized the Advanced Search feature to limit my sample of tweets to tweets with 1,000 or more likes.
I have decided to use probability sampling strategies for my research as I will be aware of each twitter user’s probability of being chosen for membership since I will be seeking out particular twitter users who have expressed their part in the COVID-19 vaccine resistance and whose tweets were popular during the time the vaccine was released (Blackstone 2012). I thought that purposive sampling would work best for my research, purposive research is when the researcher starts with particular viewpoints that they desire to analyze and then find study participants which cover a variety of viewpoints (Blackstone 2012). Since I used the Advanced Search feature and utilizing key words which pertain to my research subject, my data sample is purposive.