Thesis Title: Subtitle

Accounting for Mediated Interviews

As described above in the interview process I used a variety of methods to conduct the interviews, some of which were not in person. Often in the social sciences, face-to-face interviews are perceived as the best way of collecting qualitative data. Face-to-face communication is regarded as a richer form of data collection due to the presence of non- verbal cues and information. However, in doing this it ignores the way everyday life takes place online. Flick (2009) suggests that IM comes closest to face-to-face interviewing due to the synchronous nature of interaction, while Beneito-Montagut (2011) argues that there is no difference between online and offline interpersonal communication. While Beneito- Mantaguit’s (2011) argument is perhaps the most radical of views on this issue, insisting that face-to-face communication is a superior data collection method replicates a redundant dichotomy between online and offline modes of communication.

The idea that other methods of data collection may be just as or, in fact, more appropriate has largely been left unexplored with the exception of Holt’s (2010) work on telephone interviewing and Hanna’s (2012) work on interviewing over Skype. As a researcher, I felt

relatively comfortable with whatever medium the participant chose to be interviewed. My previous work outside the academic environment meant that I was familiar with conducting successful telephone interviews, and as a heavy user of computer mediated communication, I experienced little difficulty in negotiating the expectations around this medium. My experiences in the field and the experiences of other researchers such as Holt (2010) and Hanna (2012) indicate that there may be a variety of reasons, methodological and practical, why mediated interviewing may be just as, or more, effective than face-to-face interviewing. Over the course of this research I did not notice substantial differences between the data generated from interviews conducted face-to-face and those conducted over the phone or instant messaging. I argue that this is because my participants picked a method of interviewing with which they felt comfortable. If anything, face-to-face interviews were more likely to go ‘off-track’ into interesting and related, but not directly relevant areas of conversation. For example, one of my participants in a face-to- face interview segued into a discussion of contemporary feminism and young women. In this sense the data generated from face-to-face interviews was more contextually detailed as it gave me some insight into the participants’ personal beliefs, this did not necessarily make for a difference in critical reflection when it came to their Facebook use.