Interviewing in (digital) movement - at the intersection of online and offline places in go-along interviews with mobile media usage

Keywords: go-along interviews, qualitative methods, mobile media, digital geographies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 70

Abstract

Mobile media have become the subject of research in geography as well as a research tool, posing new ethical, ontological, methodological challenges and changing the approach to traditional geographical concepts such as space and place. As a research tool, mobile media help to improve the research process, introduce new methods and enhance the existing ones. Through the use of mobile media, contemporary societies operate in multiple, diverse spaces. Human digitalized life is filled with digital information and data, which is personalized through lines of codes and algorithms shaping both material and symbolic perception of places and affect the ways in which people interact with them. The body of research examines these processes with qualitative methods such as individual in-depth interviews which relay on past experience of mobile media users. The author proposes to use a modified go-along interviews method with mobile media usage for similar research projects. The method connects the interview with the participant observation. The participants during the study explore the digital world using mobile media - devices and its software. Its aims to analyze and explain the mechanisms of using mobile media as well as an in-depth study of new practices, experiences and narrations about places and spaces. The author intends to report a developed methodological framework for conducting go-along interviews in virtual environments with mobile media usage, presenting also a description of the method with a reflection on author own research, possible limitations, considerations and discussion about ethical issues for using this method.