Producing In Situ Data From a Distance With Mobile Instant Messaging Interviews (MIMIs): Examples From the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Use of Mobile Instant Messaging for Data Collection

From a methodological perspective, MIM can be associated with two disparate strands of methodical thinking: first as a digital tool for employing classic qualitative methods and secondly as a mobile method.

First, MIM has a key role in the methodological efforts of moving classical qualitative methods, in particular interviews, to new modes of online communication, starting with email, videoconferencing, instant messaging on stationary computers and now mobile messaging. Accordingly, scholars review and evaluate the methodical potential of MIM as an “online method” for substituting in-person interviews in comparative studies with regard to quality of data, convenience or functionality, in contrast to the original method or to other alternative forms of application (e.g., Dawson et al., 2020; Maeng et al., 2016). In these cases, MIM proves to be a flexible and discrete mode of conducting interviews.

A common aspect to these approaches is that the interview setting is usually not discussed in the interview and plays only an indirect role for the participant’s response. Questions are intended to elicit reflection and retrospection on topics that are unrelated to the actual situation and space, which the participant is experiencing at the moment of being asked.

Similarly, MIM in the popular app WhatsApp has recently been tested as an alternative to classical in-person focus groups (e.g., Chen & Neo, 2019; Singer et al., 2020). Again, studies evaluated the implementation of the “online” version in WhatsApp in comparison with the application of the in-person approach and found significant potential for the production of well-elaborated responses and anonymous group interaction, even though in-person focus groups still seem to be superior with regard to quantity and richness of the conversation. Taken together, the methodological attention afforded to MIM is limited to the application of existing methods with new tools.

Second, MIM as a factual successor of the short message service (SMS) on mobile devices is employed as part of mobile methods. Indeed, mobile devices have been used in the application of mobile methods for some time (see Boase, 2020; Boase & Humphreys, 2018; Cresswell & Merriman, 2010; Merriman, 2014). Most methodological approaches in mobile methods using mobile devices are quantitative in their orientation, of which a highly prominent one is the Mobile Experience Sampling Method (MESM) (Berkel et al., 2017; Gergle & Hargittai, 2018; Kaye et al., 2018; Schnauber-Stockmann & Karnowski, 2020). The focus of MESM lies on the accurate production of in situ self-report data on the current situation participants are experiencing. Participants are automatically prompted at fixed time intervals or at certain events to self-report their experiences. Most of these approaches have been developed and applied from a strictly quantitative, positivist perspective that emphasizes standardization and a minimization of researcher influence (Schnauber-Stockmann & Karnowski, 2020). A spontaneous exchange of mobile communication between participant and researcher is not intended, even though smartphones and in particular mobile messengers offer this potential, as Dawson (2020, p. 213) points out: “Research can be interactive and co-operative, working with participants rather than on participants. A fixed time and place for participation in the research project is not required, enabling participants to go about their daily lives while connecting with researchers.” Recently, the mobile messenger WhatsApp has been used in the context of MESM—but only to send participants the links to the standardized questionnaires (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2020).

Hence, the aspect these methodological approaches disregard is the potential of MIM for qualitative in situ research at the intersection of digital and physical spaces of everyday life. With MIMIs (Kaufmann & Peil, 2020), we tap into the deep embeddedness of mobile messaging apps in people’s everyday lives to research their lives in situ while retaining the flexibility and openness inherent to qualitative research.

The Mobile Instant Messaging Interview (MIMI)

Kaufmann and Peil (2020) proposed the MIMI as a qualitative approach that combines the advantages of mobile diaries and mobile experience sampling to capture “the fleeting moments of social behaviour within everyday life contexts and [explores] situations and experiences of media use in dialogue with the participants” (p. 231).

The idea is to accompany the participant as a co-present “researcher in the pocket” (Kaufmann, 2020, p. 170) throughout a whole day in their most commonly used mobile messaging app while they go about their daily mobile life. On an agreed day, the researcher repeatedly asks questions, depending on the focus, for example, “What are you doing right now?” “Where are you right now?” “What meaning does the situation/space you are in have for you?” in a private messenger chat to start a conversation. Once the participant has replied, the researcher can dive deeper into the situation with further inquiries to learn more about the specificities of the participant’s momentary experience as well as their social, physical and affective-emotional situatedness and embeddedness. The researcher can also ask the participant for multimodal materials that elaborate the situation. Hence, MIMIs take advantage of the multimedia affordances of smartphones and messaging apps (see Aguado & Martinez, 2020; Chen & Neo, 2019; Sallo, 2011; Tang & Hew, 2019) that allow users to express their thoughts and emotions not only with words, but also with content such as pictures, voice messages, emojis, screenshots, hyperlinks, GIFs and videos. By using popular, well-developed mobile messengers for qualitative data collection, MIMIs benefit from the ease and routinized use of these digital spaces (see also Kaufmann, 2020; Mols & Pridmore, 2020, p. 3). Furthermore, the near-synchronicity that mobile messaging shares with SMS (Rettie, 2009), allows spontaneous (near-)synchronous interactions between participant and researcher while being comparatively unobtrusive (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2020, p. 2). Another advantage of using mobile messengers for data collection are the “contextual communication-related information, determining knowledge about key aspects of dialogic process” (Aguado & Martinez, 2020, p. 443), such as when a user was last online or whether a message was read (see also Kaufmann & Peil, 2020). The end-to-end encryption of chats, e.g. in WhatsApp, supports data security (Rösler et al., 2018) and is beneficial for a trusting relationship with research subjects (see also section “Selecting Participants and Building Trust”). In her study on Syrian refugees’ smartphone practices after arrival in their new city of Vienna, Kaufmann (2018; 2020) found that MIMIs held a particular potential for research with vulnerable groups as the approach enables the researcher to meet people in their own digital spaces where they feel comfortable. In the following sections, we will show that MIMIs are suited for diverse topics and in various research design combinations.

Case Study 1: Young Adults’ Everyday Spaces and Practices During COVID-19

Core results

The multi-method design allowed valuable insights into the socio-material-technological entanglements, orderings and makings of everyday spaces of education, communication, interaction, work and leisure during the exceptional, psychologically demanding situation for the young adults during the pandemic. They were, at least during DC1 and DC4, and partially during DC2, often confined to a single room in their homes. As further elaborated in the discussion, MIMIs significantly added depth to the narratives by giving insights into the students’ more day-to-day, banal and routinized makings of everyday spaces. The collected multi-media material significantly deepened the insights. Especially the photos provided snapshots of students’ complex home spaces, which were frequently indescribable in the written form.

The multi-media allowed, for example, an insight into actual educational home spaces during the pandemic (see Figure 1). Educational spaces encompassed very different socio-material features that became particularly visible through the photos sent. The spaces varied from overtly informal learning places such as the floor, bed, or couch to work desks and complete apartments available for learning as was the case for Amelie ³ (see Figure 1). They also encompass the availability (or lack thereof) of green or leisure spaces such as gardens or balconies. The learning spaces were also, by contrast, squeezed into one-room urban apartments or cramped family homes that lacked not only a quiet space for learning but also anywhere offering solitude. The multi-media material gave insight into the techno-social elements of educational spaces, i.e. the simultaneity of hardware and software used, sometimes for different learning tasks plus socializing or working at the same time as was also the case for Amelie who simultaneously took part in an online seminar and was also on Instagram. Multi-media material allowed us to dig deeper into concrete individual strategies chosen for distance learning tasks, which was of particular interest during the pandemic, during which much higher levels of self-organization were demanded from students. Emojis in particular, but also the use of GIFs to amend descriptions of tasks, spaces and media use, significantly supported the students’ needs to communicate their emotional status and satisfaction with these tasks. Hence, through Amelie’s addition of the emoji “” she takes the chance to signify her satisfaction and with the emoji “” shows her intention to focus on the online seminar and the experiment she does under the digital supervision of the teacher in her own material kitchen.

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Figure 1.

MIMI example from the COV-IDENTITIES project: The chat protocol, photos and emojis exemplify the complexity of Amelie’s material and techno-social educational space during the second lockdown (November 2020).

Overall, the MIMIs thus added decisively to a reconstruction of students’ everyday socio-material and techno-social spaces and the course of their daily lives including their well-being under pandemic conditions.

Case Study 2: Polymedia in Times of Crisis

Core results

In combination with the guided interviews, the MIMIs provided in-depth insights into the sudden increase in use and relevance of digital media and communication technologies, especially for social cohesion and communicative connectivity, which other studies during the pandemic had also found (e.g., Ohme et al., 2020, p. 2). This upsurge in media communication was evident at various levels: temporally through a permanent presence of media communication in the everyday course of the day; content-wise through a wide range of activities performed from home via media; situationally through highly condensed media settings with second-screen and multiple-app use; and specifically through more intensive use of individual applications and functions. Various approaches to compensate for perceived deficits resulting from social distancing became apparent, such as temporary extensions of the personal media repertoire, in particular for staying in close contact with friends and relatives, or re-enactments of social gatherings with the help of digital media and specialized apps. The MIMIs not only helped to study mundane and fleeting moments of mediated communication in everyday life during the lockdown, which would be difficult to fully reconstruct in a face-to-face setting. The MIMIs also enabled the researchers to delve into situations characterized by multi-layered and dense forms of media use in the participants’ entangled social actions. While second screen use (i.e. the use of a second, usually handheld smartphone or tablet screen while watching television on a larger screen) is now well researched in media and communication studies (e.g., Buschow et al., 2014; Nee & Dozier, 2017; Stauff, 2015), the MIMIs offered insights into even more complex cross-device reception and use settings. This is vividly illustrated by the MIMI extract with Anna (see Figure 2). Anna’s media use is not only characterized by two screens open in parallel (notebook and smartphone), but also by different applications and platforms that she uses at the same time. While completing tasks for the university via the networked notebook, she simultaneously pursues her informational and social needs with the help of other media: on the one hand, by receiving current news on the development of the pandemic and on the other, through her participation in social media platforms. Thus, various spheres of everyday life and activity are interwoven here in a highly condensed way through the dissolution of boundaries and the synchronization of media communication in new arrangements.

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Figure 2.

MIMI example from the “Polymedia in times of crisis” project.

Integration of MIMIs in the Research Design

Both case studies presented in this article implemented MIMIs as part of larger qualitative multi-method research designs. Within each of the studies, the MIMIs held different positions in the research designs and were part of different implementation processes. The polymedia project (case study 2) applied a sequential design in which the MIMIs preceded the qualitative guided interviews. In this project, the MIMIs aimed at the explorative initiation of insights into polymedia usage during the pandemic, whereas the subsequent interviews aimed at gaining insights into the reasons, motives and meaning-making of media use (see also Figure 2). The implementation of the MIMIs in the exploratory phase of the study proved particularly suitable for identifying, capturing and classifying everyday practices—in this case media usage patterns in an exceptional situation—and using this knowledge for later elicitation. The MIMIs supported the designing of the interview guideline as questions could already refer to actual practices. In addition to the acquisition of usable prior knowledge, the MIMIs also offered a good opportunity to establish initial contact with the research subjects and to promote openness and trust.

In the COV-IDENTITIES project (case study 1), the MIMIs were applied concurrently with the written narratives, whereby the instruments (narrative’s prompts and selection of interview questions for the MIMIs) were attuned to each other and the analysis strategy. Following the standards of mixed methods research (MMR) with regard to integration of the research designs (Yin, 2006), the two methods were integrated at the conceptualization and analysis stages. Here, the objectives of the combination of methods were triangulation to gain new insights as well as complementarity as both methods produced distinct kinds of insights. A distinguishing feature of the COV-IDENTITIES project was the repeated implementation of the narratives and the MIMIs in a longitudinal design. The narratives produced a reflected account of the making of everyday spaces and practices, giving a general insight into how participants coped with the different stages of the pandemic. The MIMIs then gave deeper insight into how typical weekdays during the different phases of the pandemic were actually structured and how this changed. The MIMIs reflected the mundane parts of everyday practices and strategies under pandemic conditions, such as eating, studying, reading, watching TV, mingling with others, which were not covered in the more general descriptions of the narratives (see also Figure 1). In general, narratives, as we conducted them, were more participant-led, while data collection during the MIMIs was more researcher-guided—although, as Kaufmann (2020) points out, participants in MIMIs still have the leeway to decide whether and when they respond.

Implementation Process

For an overview of the data produced in the MIMIs, we provide information on the number of contacts, the responsiveness of interviewees as well as the length and modality of answers (see Table 1).

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Table 1.

Overview of the Scope and Modalities of MIMIs in the Two Case Studies.

Case Study	COV-IDENTITIES				Polymedia
Data collection phase	DC1 a	DC2	DC3	DC4
Average number of contacts per data collection day	7.2	5.3	5.5	5.5	9.6
Valid responses (reaction within 15 minutes after contact)	89%	84%	86%	81%	93%
Average reaction time for valid responses (in minutes)	2.8	3.4	2.0	3.0	3.6
Average duration of interaction for valid responses (in minutes)	12.0	14.6	17.8	27.6	19.1
Average number of words in valid responses to a contact	53	55	35	57	47
Average number of emojis in valid responses to a contact	2.2	1.8	2.0	3.2	1.7
Average number of photos in valid responses to a contact	0.2	0.1	0.1	0.4	0.2
Average number of voice messages in valid responses to a contact	0	0	0	0.04	0.02
Average number of video recordings, memes or gifs in valid responses to a contact	0.01	0.01	0.02	0.03	0

^a After the first three MIMIs were conducted, the team agreed to switching from hourly to two-hourly inquiry intervals. This explains the higher number of valid responses in DC1.

The team of case study 1 agreed upon an approximately two-hourly interval, starting from 8 a.m. and ending with the last contact at 8 p.m., for all of the DCs in order to produce comparable sections of participants’ typical days. Case study 2 started data collection once participants had got out of bed in the morning and ended when they went back to bed at night. Valid response rates (calculated as response to contact attempts within 15 minutes) were high, supporting the feasibility of both approaches. For an impression of interaction intensity and communication exchange as well as of depth of responses, which were relatively similar in both case studies, the duration of separate dialogues and average number of words typed or said by respondents within a dialogue are presented in Table 1. In the longitudinal case study 1, a drop in the word count is notable in DC3. Among the reasons are that the lockdown had been revoked and students were no longer confined to their homes but involved in activities such as socializing or playing sports, in which they presumably did not have the time to give detailed responses. Another interfering factor was that DC3 took place close to the examination period and interviewers struggled to keep participants involved during this stage. This points to an important factor in the outcomes of MIMIs: situational factors that interfere with participants’ ability and willingness to respond. In general, photos and screenshots were seldom used in both case studies but when they were, they revealed important insights into situational complexities. In contrast, emojis were more commonly used by participants of both studies—in most cases to both express, and give important hints to, feelings. Emojis replaced facial expressions and gestures due to the lack of bodily performativity in the chat format. Video recordings, GIFs, and memes were only (and very seldom) submitted in case study 1. The participants used them to emphasize feelings, similar to the use of emojis. Very few voice messages were submitted, by just one participant in each case study, neither of whom wanted or had time to compose and send text messages. Thus, in both cases, voice messages produced data that would have otherwise been lost. The voice messages were then transcribed for analysis.

Importance of Clear Methodological Guidelines and Thorough Interviewer Training

Even though MIMIs are a qualitative approach, it is important when working in a research team to agree on specific methodological guidelines so that the MIMIs are carried out in similar ways and intervals to ensure a general comparability and to collect comparative amounts of data across participants. This is particularly important for research projects that encompass groups of interviewers, including inexperienced student researchers. For these reasons, in our case studies we defined in advance the interview opening, the frequency of contact, the dimension and content of the questions asked, prompts for multi-media content and the handling of late answers. We pre-formulated prompts for efficient copy-pasting, with which interviewers started the MIMIs on each data collection day. Furthermore, at the beginning of each MIMI day, the research subjects were briefly reminded that they had agreed to participate and were informed on the ways and approximate frequencies of contact. They were encouraged to use full multimedia options to respond and to only answer when they were in a safe situation (e.g., not while driving a vehicle). This made sure that participants were prepared for what was ahead and that they responded more openly and quickly. We learned from the process that adjustments to the method should only be made by mutual agreement and coordination in a team, which can, however, sometimes be difficult to implement in practice. As for other methods, pre-tests are essential and particularly important in the process of interviewer trainings.

When working with our students, it became clear that interviewers need to be trained in phrasing questions suitable for chat formats and in a comparable way across MIMIs conducted by the team of interviewers. A major challenge of MIMIs is that the chat format prompts short conversations, whereas researchers are interested in the breadth and depth of research subjects’ experience of embeddedness in everyday spaces. Thus, questions need to be posed very carefully: They should be short, yet precise, and clear as there is no room for explaining vague wordings, especially given participants’ limited attention levels. Similar to qualitative interviews, only one question should be asked at a time to avoid receiving only partial answers. Concurrently, questions need to be posed in such a way that respondents explain and assess their individual practices and make explicit how they give meaning to their practices. If questions only scratch the surface, the interviewer misses the chance of working toward “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973) and does not fully exploit the potential of the method—to reach people in their mundane mobile lives and to immerse into their different life spheres in real time.

Then again, interviewers must not go too far when questioning the respondents. For example, pictures, screenshots, audio files and the like should not be demanded too vigorously, as such a request could put pressure on the respondents and overstretch their willingness to share information (see also Kaufmann & Peil, 2020). At times, the MIMIs went awry for the participants when the requests interrupted a meal, a workout, or an online lecture. The dialogues in WhatsApp thus represented a balancing act, in which the need to explore random situations through questions, and the consideration of the respondents’ individual willingness to provide information and documentation had to be carefully weighed against each other.

While mobile messengers have become a very common way of communication for many individuals (Chen & Neo, 2019), the colloquial atmosphere that is afforded can also be counterproductive when fostering non-professional everyday conversations. In addition, the interviewers have to consider the lack of contextual information in written communication, which needs to be compensated for either or both linguistically and visually. The interviewers’ flexibility is especially needed when respondents react in unexpected ways or not at all, when they are annoyed by questions or deviate strongly from the topic. One older respondent, for example, in the polymedia project drifted off into long monologues about politics and the national media landscape. The interviewers must be able to set themselves apart, especially given the challenge that context collapse poses to interviewers when working with their own mobile messaging accounts for the sake of a more personal connection (see also boyd, 2002; Truong, 2018; see also section “Research and Data Ethics”). In sum, the MIMI method requires communicative prudence, flexibility, and empathy on the part of the interviewers in continuous conversations with participants, as has become clear in the practical implementation of the data collection method.

Selecting Participants and Building Trust

As explained in more detail by Kaufmann and Peil (2020), it is essential to apply MIMIs only with research subjects who are known to be regular and habitual users of mobile messaging and who consider their smartphone as a constant “companion” (Thulin et al., 2020, p. 170). In this respect, the applicability of the method benefits from the awareness that many people today live in a state of permanent “mediatized connectivity” (Steinmaurer, 2014), being “permanently online, permanently connected” (Vorderer et al., 2018). Mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram or WeChat are among the most widely used applications for they represent an easy-to-use, cheap and flexible tool for communicating and organizing everyday life (Ling & Lai, 2016). WhatsApp alone has over 2 billion users worldwide (WhatsApp Blog, 2020) and is the most used mobile messenger in Austria (Statista, 2020b). Now that more and more older people use WhatsApp, too (Fernández-Ardèvol & Rosales, 2018), the eligibility of a respondent is not necessarily a question of age, but rather of the app’s embeddedness in their everyday life (Kaufmann & Peil, 2020, p. 243). However, while older participants may have access to the technology and regularly use it, they may have a rather functional than expressive approach toward communicating through mobile messaging, which might be less conducive for generating rich, qualitative insights (Chen & Neo, 2019, p. 9). In the follow-up inquiry of the polymedia project (case study 2), irritations about the method were only expressed by those respondents who did not always have their smartphone with them. Those who used it constantly reported to have found the method pleasant because they perceived it as unobtrusive and time efficient. Here, the COVID-19 lockdown proved beneficial for using the MIMI approach as participants used media and communication technologies during the crisis situation even more frequently than usual (see also Ohme et al., 2020), and hence were probably even more available to participate in MIMIs. Due to the high level of commitment required from both the interviewer and the interviewee (Kaufmann & Peil, 2020), the method is still not suitable for data collection phases lasting several consecutive days, which was also pointed out by some of the participants. The COV-IDENTITIES project (case study 1) shows, however, that it is possible to implement MIMIs in longitudinal data collection, given there is a time lag between individual data collection stages (see section “The Potential of MIMIs for Longitudinal Research”).

Another aspect to be considered in the interviewee selection process is the importance of (establishing) trust. By participating in MIMIs, research subjects give researchers deep and concrete insights into their mundane lives, especially when they augment their written answers with photos, screenshots or videos. Thus, MIMIs must be carefully prepared and attentively moderated, to allow participants to open up and to prevent them from feeling their privacy is being invaded.

Fields of Application of MIMIs

MIMIs are particularly suited to investigating the complexities and simultaneities (see Massey, 2005) of everyday micro-spaces, mundane practices and their contextualities.

In comparison to classical methods of qualitative social research, such as interviews and narratives, which are conducted at one point in time, be it in person or online, MIMIs build on continuous connection between the researcher and their research subjects. MIMIs investigate the actual merging of time-space matters very appropriately through researchers’ in situ outreach to study participants, capturing their mundane, routinized, less reflected practices that often get lost in ex-post data collection.

MIMIs as Part of Multi- or Mixed Methods Designs

MIMIs are a highly focused and specific method for researching fleeting moments yet are limited with regard to the larger context of situated practices. That is why they are best combined with more reflexive methods that provide further background to and augment data generated through MIMIs (see also Berkel et al., 2017, p. 937). As a qualitative approach, MIMIs are a valuable contribution both as part of qualitative multi-method research designs, as we have shown in the two case studies, and of MMR (qualitative combined with quantitative methods). In MMR designs, e.g. in combination with a quantitative survey, MIMIs could be made fruitful by informing or enhancing the quantitative data with inside views of the complexities of everyday situations.

Criteria to distinguish research designs according to Teddlie and Tashakkori (2006) are, among others, the type of the implementation process, whereby methods can be applied in a concurrent, sequential, or combined manner as well as used for the purpose of conversion. Furthermore, they distinguish approaches according to the functions of the research study: triangulation, complementarity, development, initiation, expansion (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2006, p. 14). Through our case studies we reflected upon the MIMIs’ usefulness for sequential designs and the explorative initiation of insights as well as their concurrent application for the purposes of triangulation and complementarity. In our view however, MIMIs are suitable to be integrated in all of these designs where they can contribute to all functions of multi-method and mixed methods research.

The Potential of MIMIs for Longitudinal Research

As case study 1 showed, MIMIs can also be applied in longitudinal research. The longitudinal application brings both advantages and challenges for the implementation of MIMIs. In the course of the four completed data collection stages of the COV-IDENTITIES project, only two participants dropped out, whereas three cases were lost in DC3 due to a student researcher interrupting their own participation in data collection. Based on our—comparatively small—study and sample, we would suggest that MIMIs have a major potential to be applied as part of longitudinal designs. This is most likely of interest if participants are accompanied through specific phases of change where other methods fail to follow participants (possible focuses could be transition phases after school life, in-between jobs, relationship phases, specific events including traumatic experiences).

Since the process of conducting MIMIs is much more time-consuming (for both participants and researchers) than a one-time qualitative or even quantitative data collection, it is advisable to conduct MIMIs with a time lag between individual data collection days as we did in the COV-IDENTITIES project.

Appropriate Data Analysis Strategies

MIMIs produce mainly written text, but may include—depending on the instructions and the freedom given to participants—photos and screenshots, specifically taken by participants for the purpose of the data collection or from the phone’s storage, voice messages, videos, GIFs, emojis, links, memes (see also Aguado & Martinez, 2020, p. 442; Chen & Neo, 2019, p. 3). Possible data analysis approaches include content analysis (see case studies 1 and 2; Kaufmann, 2018), where MIMIs are used to triangulate, complement and illustrate the results from the analysis of other forms of data. MIMIs could also be analyzed with a special focus on the visual aspect of data or with social media specific analysis approaches (e.g., Hand, 2017). As MIMIs lend themselves to implementation as part of mixed- or multi-method designs (see also section “MIMIs as Part of Multi- or Mixed Methods Designs”), it can also be reasonable to use integrated data analysis strategies that follow topics across various data sets (e.g., Moran-Ellis et al., 2006).

Research and Data Ethics

In the application of MIMIs, the research and data ethical issues connected to all digital and online methods need to be taken into account, e.g. how informed consent can be implemented appropriately, how confidentiality can be ensured in the digital sphere and how data can be collected and stored in a secure way (see Eynon et al., 2016; Hewson, 2016; Franzke et al., 2020). Case study 1 requested informed consent from the participants in the form of a MS Word document sent via email in line with requirements by the institutional review board at the University of Innsbruck. This procedure, however, complicated the otherwise smooth connection via WhatsApp with the participants. Ways of seeking consent via messenger, which might not be in line with expectations by institutional review boards, however, need further exploration in our view. In case study 2, this was the approach taken and consent to participate in the study was successfully and only obtained via WhatsApp. Furthermore, as MIMIs are conducted on smartphones owned by participants, researchers need to take into account ethical issues connected to new mobile media technologies. After all, while mobile digital devices bring new labor-saving, innovative, intuitive benefits to social science research, they also raise new ethical and moral questions (Ess, 2020; Holton & Harmer, 2019).

In a research project where MIMIs are applied, it might moreover prove useful to postpone deleting the chats and contact details until further after data collection. This opens the chance for researchers to keep the communication channel open for a continued exchange and the opportunity to give something back to participants even though data collection is completed (see also Kaufmann, 2020), e.g. in the form of useful information and contacts, event invitations, or updates on the overall research project’s progress. Still, at some point the social and technical connection with the participants does come to an end, so questions regarding data security and ethics need sufficient attention from the very beginning until the end of the engagement with participants.

In this regard, researchers also need to be responsive to the constantly changing platform policies and functionalities, e.g. when certain functions are remodeled or not serviced anymore or new ones are added, which is particularly relevant when privacy features are concerned (Chen & Neo, 2019, p. 9).

Finally, conducting MIMIs also has ethical research implications with regard to the researcher’s well-being. Limited resources for research usually do not allow smartphones to be provided for research studies, which is why private devices and phone numbers are likely to be used for MIMIs. This procedure might lead to a context collapse for researchers of their private and field work spheres where researchers are in turn accessible for participants, potentially resulting in uncomfortable situations and continuous stress (see also Kaufmann, 2020).