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Digital Media, Conventional Methods: Using Video Interviews to Study the Labor of Digital Journalism

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Research Methods for the Digital Humanities

Abstract

Interviews produce textual data, they are interpretive, and are opened to new potentialities through video link-up applications, textual analysis software, digital archiving, and web hosting. This chapter is a methodological treatise based on research conducted via video interviews with journalists in New Zealand and the US. It outlines the benefits and limitations of adapting interview research as part of a Digital Humanities approach. The chapter is animated by a set of questions, including: (1) How are interview methods best adapted to digital contexts? (2) How can interviewing be incorporated into Digital Humanities as a field? and, (3) In the context of news production, how can interviews be used to critically investigate practices and theories of digital labor?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Susie Weller, “Using Internet Video Calls in Qualitative (longitudinal) Interviews: Some Implications for Rapport,” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 20, no. 6 (2017); Sally Seitz, “Pixilated Partnerships, Overcoming Obstacles in Qualitative Interviews via Skype: A Research Note,” Qualitative Research early online publication, 16, no. 2 (2015): 229–235; Hannah Deakin and Kelly Wakefield, “Skype Interviewing: Reflections of Two PhD Researchers,” Qualitative Research 14, no. 5 (2014); and Naomi Hay-Gibson, “Interviews via VoIP: Benefits and Disadvantages within a PhD Study of SMEs,” Library and Information Research 33, no. 105 (2009).

  2. 2.

    Seitz, “Pixilated Partnerships, Overcoming Obstacles in Qualitative Interviews via Skype.”

  3. 3.

    Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (New York: Free Press, 1955).

  4. 4.

    Lana Rakow, “Commentary: Interviews and Focus Groups as Critical and Cultural Methods,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 88, no. 2 (2011).

  5. 5.

    Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998); Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor, Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011).

  6. 6.

    Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone, “Rethinking the Focus Group in Media and Communications Research,” Journal of Communication 46, no. 2 (1996): 80.

  7. 7.

    Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 98.

  8. 8.

    Alex Broom, Lynda Cheshire, and Michael Emmison, “Qualitative Researchers’ Understandings of Their Practice and the Implications for Data Archiving and Sharing,” Sociology 43, no. 6 (2009): 1164.

  9. 9.

    Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978).

  10. 10.

    Herbert Gans, “Deciding What’s News: Story Suitability,” Society 16, no. 3 (1979).

  11. 11.

    Chris Paterson and David Domingo, Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 153.

  13. 13.

    Maurizio Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardy (London, UK: Routledge, 1996).

  14. 14.

    Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Trebor Scholz, Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2012); and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York, NY: Penguin, 2004).

  15. 15.

    Bettina-Johanna Krings, Linda Nierling, Marcello Pedaci, and Mariangela Piersanti, Working Time, Gender and Work-Life Balance (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Higher Institute of Labour Studies, 2009), 37, http://www.itas.kit.edu/pub/m/2009/krua09a_contents.htm.

  16. 16.

    Noortje Marres, “The Redistribution of Methods: On Intervention in Digital Social Research, Broadly Conceived,” Sociological Review 60, no. 1 (2012): 140.

  17. 17.

    Deakin and Wakefield, “Skype Interviewing.”

  18. 18.

    Ted Palys and Chris Atchison, “Qualitative Research in the Digital Era: Obstacles and Opportunities,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 11, no. 4 (2012): 352–367.

  19. 19.

    Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 158.

  20. 20.

    Weller, “Using Internet Video Calls in Qualitative (Longitudinal) Interviews,” 8.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 11.

  22. 22.

    Palys and Atchison, “Qualitative Research in the Digital Era.”

  23. 23.

    Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 68.

  24. 24.

    Irena Medjedovic and Andreas Witzel, “Secondary Analysis of Interviews: Using Codes and Theoretical Concepts from the Primary Study,” Historical Social Research 33, no. 3 (2008).

  25. 25.

    Tai Neilson, “‘I Don’t Engage’: Online Communication and Social Media Use among New Zealand Journalists,” Journalism 19, no. 4 (2018): 536–552.

  26. 26.

    Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 46.

  27. 27.

    Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 41.

  28. 28.

    Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 130.

  29. 29.

    Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1976).

  30. 30.

    Megan Le Masurier, “Slow Journalism,” Journalism Practice 10, no. 4 (2016): 439–447; Neil Thurman and Anna Walters, “Live Blogging–Digital Journalism’s Pivotal Platform?” Digital Journalism 1, no. 1 (2013); and Alfred Hermida, “Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism,” Journalism Practice 4, no. 3 (2010).

  31. 31.

    Louise Corti, Andreas Witzel, and Libby Bishop, “On the Potentials and Problems of Secondary Analysis. An Introduction to the FQS Special Issue on Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6, no. 1 (2005).

  32. 32.

    Harry Van Den Berg, “Reanalyzing Qualitative Interviews from Different Angles: The Risk of Decontextualization and Other Problems of Sharing Qualitative Data,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6, no. 1 (2005).

  33. 33.

    Ping-Chun Hsiung, “Lives & Legacies: A Digital Courseware for the Teaching and Learning of Qualitative Interviewing,” Qualitative Inquiry 22, no. 2 (2016): 135.

  34. 34.

    Fitzpatrick in Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Matthew Gold (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012): 13.

References

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

  • Hermida, Alfred. “Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.” Journalism Practice 4, no. 3 (2010): 297–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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    Article  Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

  • Krings, Bettina-Johanna, Linda Nierling, Marcello Pedaci, and Mariangela Piersanti. Working Time, Gender and Work-Life Balance. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Higher Institute of Labour Studies, 2009. http://www.itas.kit.edu/pub/m/2009/krua09a_contents.htm.

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    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindlof, Thomas, and Bryan Taylor. Qualitative Communication Research Methods. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lunt, Peter, and Sonia Livingstone. “Rethinking the Focus Group in Media and Communications Research.” Journal of Communication 46, no. 2 (1996): 79–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marres, Noortje. “The Redistribution of Methods: On Intervention in Digital Social Research, Broadly Conceived.” Sociological Review 60, no. 1 (2012): 139–165.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin, 1976.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medjedovic, Irena, and Andreas Witzel. “Secondary Analysis of Interviews: Using Codes and Theoretical Concepts from the Primary Study.” Historical Social Research 33, no. 3 (2008): 148–178.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neilson, Tai. “‘I Don’t Engage’: Online Communication and Social Media Use Among New Zealand Journalists.” Journalism 19, no. 4 (2018): 536–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Palys, Ted, and Chris Atchison. “Qualitative Research in the Digital Era: Obstacles and Opportunities.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 11, no. 4 (2012): 352–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paterson, Chris A., and David Domingo. Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production. 2nd ed. New York: Peter Lang, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rakow, Lana F. “Commentary: Interviews and Focus Groups as Critical and Cultural Methods.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 88, no. 2 (2011): 416–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scholz, Trebor. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2012.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Seitz, Sally. “Pixilated Partnerships, Overcoming Obstacles in Qualitative Interviews via Skype: A Research Note.” Qualitative Research 16, no. 2 (2015): 229–235.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thurman, Neil, and Anna Walters. “Live Blogging–Digital Journalism’s Pivotal Platform?” Digital Journalism 1, no. 1 (2013): 82–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tuchman, Gaye. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Den Berg, Harry. “Reanalyzing Qualitative Interviews from Different Angles: The Risk of Decontextualization and Other Problems of Sharing Qualitative Data.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6, no. 1 (2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weller, Susie. “Using Internet Video Calls in Qualitative (Longitudinal) Interviews: Some Implications for Rapport.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 20, no. 6 (2017): 1–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Tai Neilson

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  1. Tai Neilson
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  1. Levenberg Services, Inc., Bloomingburg, NY, USA

    lewis levenberg

  2. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Tai Neilson

  3. The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

    David Rheams

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Neilson, T. (2018). Digital Media, Conventional Methods: Using Video Interviews to Study the Labor of Digital Journalism. In: levenberg, l., Neilson, T., Rheams, D. (eds) Research Methods for the Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96713-4_9

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