Online interview

Online versus offline

Advantages

There are many reasons online interviews can be an appropriate and valuable methodological tool. For example, the use of online interviews as opposed to onsite interviews provides the researcher with opportunities to:

• carry out interviews with a very geographically dispersed population.
• interview individuals or groups who are often difficult to reach, such as the less physically mobile (disabled/in prison/in hospital) or the socially isolated (drug dealers/terminally ill/ etc.) or those living in dangerous places (e.g. war zones).
• carry out interviews in a personal, yet neutral, location such as a home. Researchers and participants can be comfortable while still maintaining their personal space and, if necessary, keep their specific whereabouts private.
• reach a target audience where the audience is unknown (e.g. people who may use a certain type of technology) or would like to remain anonymous. E-mail and instant messaging interview methods have the advantage of privacy. Interviews that take place in public online venues (e.g. discussion boards, chatrooms) may be off-putting to some participants.
• provide savings in costs to the researcher (for example, costs associated with travel and venue hire).
• record data quickly and accurately. Video and audio interactions on Skype can be easily captured using desktop software. Data generated from textual forms (e.g. chatrooms, e-mail correspondence) is already transcribed.
• reduce the environmental impact of research by eliminating the resource expenditure associated with traveling long distances.
• interview individuals who would like to stay visual anonymous and to engage in more self-disclosure or feel liberated from stereotypes that may be associated with visible identity markers such as age, race or gender. Because the participant cannot see the researcher, this may also help reduce issues of interviewer effect.

In asynchronous interviews the extended time frame can also be a benefit allowing researchers more time to think of evocative or precise follow-up questions. Researchers can reread the chat history and use previous responses to inform the subsequent questions.

Limitations

There are, however, possible drawbacks to online interviews. Scholars such as Mann and Stewart (2005) have questioned how effective they are in comparison to face-to-face interviews. Online interviews may make it difficult to:

• establish a good rapport and level of trust between researcher and participant in a computer-mediated research relationship.
• achieve a long-term commitment to the research subject by participants, if this is necessary.
• communicate with participants with varying degrees of technical skill within a population. Participants cannot be assumed to all possess the level of technical competence required to employ the research methods.
• achieve satisfactory closure to the research relationship at the end of a long-term project.
• maintain attention, as the researcher may not have control over (or even be aware of) distractions that are interrupting the interviewee's engagement with the interview.
• recruit participants. In order to access specific populations, there may be a need to 'advertise' through relevant newsgroups and forums.

Though the question-and-answer format of the interview is similar to face-to-face interviews, during text-based interviews participants and researchers are not visible to one another. This can make it difficult to assess how questions and responses are being interpreted on either side due to a lack of visual cues.

Internet researcher Annette Markham (1998) observes that text-based interviewing can take much longer than face-to-face, phone or Skype interviews because typing takes longer than talking. Textual methods require users to verbalize conventional aspects of polite conversation, such as nodding or smiling, which requires added effort and time.

Others highlight the need for additional methodological planning for online interview respondents that includes the possibility that respondents may attempt to deliberately deceive

Ethical considerations

There are many ethical considerations that arise solely because the interview is conducted online. As suggested by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), these will vary depending on community norms, local and national codes and guidelines, and context specific considerations.

Privacy

If the research was conducted the researcher should consider taking appropriate steps to protect human subjects and, where appropriate, their avatars or online representations.

Consent

Has the researcher obtained proper informed consent? The importance of consent stays the same online. The researcher needs to obtain it so to not formally contravenes European data protection legislation. However, it can be done in different ways online. For example, a consent form could be emailed and then faxed, posted or send back via email. Another way of creating consent could be to include a tick box "I accept" to simulate a signature.

Withdrawal

In asynchronous formats of interviews, researchers have experienced a lack of knowing if the participant has withdrawn or if the answer just took some time. In synchronous interviews a withdraw button could be added.

Netiquette

Netiquette, the way people expect someone to behave online, becomes important for online interviews in three ways. Firstly, silence which can be used in face-to-face interviews as a tactic to encourage someone to talk more – is more ambiguous online. It could mean that the interviewer has left, is slow to answer or even withdrew from the interview. Secondly, by selecting participants for an online interview two things should be kept in mind. On the one side, the aspect of representation should be considered as not everyone has internet or has the technical abilities to use it. Furthermore, if the interviewer aims to approach candidates online in forums, the researcher should think of ways how to do it in the least disruptive way, for example asking the forum facilitator first instead of directly posting the inquiry into the forum. Another important aspect is the use of emoticons. A sensitive use of emoticons is advisable to adapt the style to suit that of the interviewee.

Community interviews

The Internet allows many people at once to directly interview persons of public interest. Voting-systems may allow communities to collectively find the questions they'd like to get answered most.

Reddit AMAs

One popular subsite of the social media and aggregation site reddit, /r/IAmA, prompts its users to ask celebrities, politicians other persons of public interest questions about any topic. These interviews are called "AMAs" for "ask me anything". These interviews, of which there are multiple everyday, often receive thousands of questions which are voted on by the community via reddit's comment-voting system with all of them being answerable by the person being interviewed. Interviewees are required to provide proof of their identity to the volunteer moderators of the site and have included people such as Barack Obama, Chris Hadfield (who answered questions from the International Space Station), Bill Gates, Stephen Colbert, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Larry King and many more.