Tapestries of inquiry—digital diaries as an engaged affective method in collective knowledge-making

Digitally enabled inquiry is enabling a proliferation of methods for creating knowledges differently. In this article, I share my inquiry journey of using digital diaries that allow for variation, creativity, and flexibility in the research process. I draw from a longitudinal research project with 15 first-time mothers in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I employ digital diaries as a form of research-creation, not presented as prescriptive steps, but rather as emergent ways of thinking and feeling with participants. I pose five tapestries of inquiry that characterize the research process and share an embodied mode of social science inquiry: attuned responsiveness, embodied empathy, everyday affective diversity, meandering growth, and care-full vulnerability. The entanglements do not provide any clear procedure on doing digital diary inquiry, but provide opportunities to interpret and feel with the text, avoiding closure and embracing ambiguity and openness as essential to understanding what such inquiry can do for creating new knowledges.