The Affordances of Interview Research on Zoom: New Intimacies and Active Listening

Ever since completing my PhD in 2000, based on ethnographic field work and interviews with journalists, I've always been passionate about doing research which illuminates the lived experience of the professionals who make journalism happen. For the past five years, I've turned my attention to the work of community journalists. Sometimes referred to as “hyperlocal” journalists, these practitioners have launched news outlets in local communities (Harte, Howell, & Williams, 2018). They provide an invaluable service, particularly in the light of widespread closures of local newspapers. I had planned an ambitious project focused on traveling around the UK to interview community journalists about their work. My aim was to carry out at least 30 face-to-face interviews in the spring and summer of 2020. But then COVID hit. When the lockdown started in the UK in March 2020, I thought I would have to abandon my research. However, I quickly realized that the lockdown and the new technologies that it necessitated represented an opportunity. I decided that instead of traveling around the UK, I would simply carry out the interviews online. I obtained ethics approval for the modified research project, applied for a small pot of funding from the British Academy's COVID-19 grant scheme.1 While I have a long list of failed grant applications, this time I was successful. The funding enabled me to pay participants for their time, as well as to hire a researcher to carry out some of the interviews and help with the transcription.