Abstract/Summary

The contingencies of social distancing and the new possibilities for fieldwork from afar that the pandemic has forced us to confront present to us an even greater opportunity to critically evaluate all of the different mediational means we use in our research, both technological (recording devices, software programs) and discursive (field-notes, transcripts), to understand their inevitable effects on what (and who) is made visible in the context of our research and what (and who) is rendered invisible. An online interview is not just a ‘replica’ of a face-to-face interview. It is an altogether different sort of social occasion, not necessarily better or worse, not necessarily less ‘normal’, as Christian Schmieder (quoted in Silverman’s article) points out, but definitely different, and if we ignore the differences, we will severely limit our ability to make sense of ‘what’s going on’ and what people are saying.