Paper short abstract:

New and expanding digital technology platforms have altered how researchers and participants alike are implicated in practices of qualitative research. This presentation, informed by our research on data, offers provocations on how to address platform-mediated research.

Paper long abstract:

Digital technology platforms increasingly mediate researcher-participant relationships and transform longstanding approaches to privacy and trust. Examples abound: survey platforms and social media for recruitment, Gmail and Outlook for scheduling interviews, audio and video conferencing platforms for interviews, and platforms for compensation, not to mention a growing assortment of tools for data analysis that use cloud-based and/or AI features. How can researchers do right by participants, and themselves, in such shifting digital contexts?

In this presentation, we explore a range of quandaries revolving primarily around privacy and trust we encountered in conducting our respective qualitative projects: one on data collection and surveillance on U.S. college campuses, the other on how cases of identity theft get resolved. These projects set out to address questions about privacy and surveillance in the operation of systems and the lives of participants, but quickly became autoethnographic from a methodological standpoint. We are keen to explore how qualitative researchers can respond to these questions by cultivating mindsets, commitments, and modes of engagement rather than static rules and standards, particularly given what we perceive as insufficient or misguided advice from institutional review boards amidst rapid technological change. This presentation begins to address this imperative by highlighting our own reflexive approaches, incorporating how STS and other fields have turned to principles of justice in practice. It also problematizes the distinction between online and offline research, demonstrating how even seemingly non-digital studies implicate crucial questions about the role of digital platforms in qualitative research.