Assumptions, emotions, and interpretations as ethical moments: navigating a small‐scale cross‐cultural online interviewing study

Abstract

In this paper, I map important ‘messy’ elements that I learned from my five‐month small‐scale research project, one that was designed around pivotal works on online social research. I used computers and the Internet with Miñan, a young man living in Guinea, West Africa, in order to examine his perceptions surrounding the value of these technological tools for his future. Throughout the paper, I address multiple levels of ethics in practice such as recognizing the different effects that the Internet environment can have on participants, the realities that cross‐cultural barriers pose the researcher and the participant, the impact of previous relationships on the research process, and how meanings produced by language are easily misinterpreted via the Internet. As a result, I assert that during online social research, reflexivity is a moral obligation, where meaning and representation can have a tendency to be skewed, especially when working in cross‐cultural situations.

Keywords:

• Internet ethnography
• West Africa
• cultural studies
• cross‐cultural

Notes

1. Paul in italics refers to me, the researcher, speaking during the online interviews.

2. When my words are ‘in between quotations’, this connotes my reflections before, during, and/or after the interview process.

3. Miñan in bold refers to when my participant is speaking during the online interviews.

4. Miñan is a Fulani word that translates to ‘little sibling’. Older siblings will call their younger siblings ‘Miñan’, which indicates family rank. Therefore, when I refer to my participant as Miñan, it indicates his familial status; since I lived in his family as a ‘host brother’ I called him Miñan because of my age. This is not his real name.