Conducting Biographical-Narrative Interviews During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Methodological Reflections on Situated Affective Encounters and Emotional Reflexivity

In pre-pandemic times, biographical-narrative interviews were conducted regularly on-site in intimate face-to-face situations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by several lockdowns and the politics of social distancing, forced many scholars to use digital tools for interviewing. In this arti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Forum, qualitative social research Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 1 - 23
Main Author: Ruokonen-Engler, Minna Kristina
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Berlin Freie Universität Berlin 2025
FQS
Subjects:
Anxiety
biografisch-narrative Interviewführung
biographical-narrative interviewing
COVID-19
COVID-19 pandemic
COVID-19-Pandemie
digital online interviews
digitale Online-Interviews
emotional reflexivity
emotionale Reflexivität
Emotions
Epidemie
Interviews
Narratives
Pandemics
Reflexivity
situated affective encounters
situierte affektive Begegnungen
ISSN:1438-5627, 1438-5627
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Summary:In pre-pandemic times, biographical-narrative interviews were conducted regularly on-site in intimate face-to-face situations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by several lockdowns and the politics of social distancing, forced many scholars to use digital tools for interviewing. In this article, I take a self-reflexive, autoethnographic look at my own research process during the COVID-19 pandemic. I explore the problems I faced in conducting interviews both on-site and in online settings. I focus on the affective and emotional dimension, as this was strongly influenced by "atmospheres of anxiety" (TRIGG, 2022), created by the pandemic. I propose the concept of "emotional reflexivity" (HOLMES, 2015) as a tool for dealing with the challenges encountered in the research field. Furthermore, I advocate an epistemic exploration of the objections and opportunities of conducting biographical-narrative interviews in digital online space. In so doing, I aim to contribute to the empirically grounded, methodological discussion of the affective and emotional underpinnings and diverse ways of conducting such interviews.
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ISSN:1438-5627
1438-5627
DOI:10.17169/fqs-26.1.4357