Leveraging digital spaces and datafication in communication research: contributions of digital qualitative fluidity to ethnographic interviewing

Abstract

The digitalization of communication practices affords major gains for qualitative methods of communication science. What we term digital qualitative fluidity captures the way traditional boundaries between interviewing and ethnography may dissolve through the use of contemporary, digital technologies. We illustrate how communication scholars have leveraged the digital to open ethnographic spaces within interviews to examine situated communication processes of meaning-making in action, amplifying marginalized voices, evoking affect, and enabling sense making–better meeting key goals of qualitative research. We discuss examples of harnessing the fluidity of digital ethnographic interviews in different corners of communication science, dilemmas that accompany this approach, and institutional investments to ensure that qualitative data and methods are valued alongside computational approaches.