Online Interview Shocks: Reflecting on Power Relations in Online Qualitative Interviews

Power Relations in Qualitative Interviews

The very fact that interviewers arrive to the interview as experts who subject the interviewees to questions and study creates an imbalanced starting point in qualitative interviews (Harding, 1991). However, the powerful position of the interviewers is not exclusive, as interviewees can refuse to be interviewed or to answer certain questions, can withhold information, and can oppose interviewer’s interpretations (Kvale, 2006). Furthermore, when interviewers and interviewees come from different social positions, the web of power relations gets more complicated, as the complex social composites that structure people’s lives penetrate the interview (Griffin, 2016; Vähäsantanen & Saarinen, 2013). Namely, the interviewers’ and the interviewees’ intersectional positions/identities play a dominant role in building rapport, generating data, and analyzing it, particularly in qualitative interviews across social positions (Khan & MacEachen, 2022).

Indeed, intersectional theory (Crenshaw, 1991) suggests that a whole range of factors, including gender, class, age, sexual identity, ethnicity, and other social positions/locations all intersect to structure human interactions in different and unpredictable ways. They play a crucial part in the knowledge production process and therefore must be part of the analysis process (Herzog, 2005). In shaping the power relations in interviews across social positions, certain factors matter more in some contexts than in others, and the same social position can be both powerful and powerless in different interview contexts (Vähäsantanen & Saarinen, 2013). Interviewing across gender, for example, can have more significant meaning in conservative cultures where patriarchal norms are dominant than in liberal social contexts. Furthermore, the complex web of power relations is shaped differently depending on structural as well as specific factors that often can only be understood in retrospect (Griffin, 2016). Thus, in the present study we critically reflect on the shocking moments and incidents in which unexpected and surprising dynamics occurred in an attempt to untangle the complicated web of intersecting factors that shape the power relations in the OCBI conducted (Pillow, 2003).

Interview Shocks

The concept of interview shocks refers to the common experience qualitative interviewers often share of feeling emotionally overwhelmed by unexpected occurrences during qualitative interviews. It describes “the interviewer’s emotional-cognitive reaction to an encounter in which her implicit expectations are disrupted” (Sands & Krumer-Nevo, 2006, p. 952). The conceptualization of interview shocks goes beyond the personal emotional realm; interview shocks reflect a clash between different interpretations held by interviewers and interviewees who occupy diverse power positions (Sands & Krumer-Nevo, 2006). The disruption of the interviewer’s expectation or the experience of being shocked does not suggest that the interview has “gone wrong.” Rather, as Watson (2009) suggests, interview shocks create opportunities or gaps in which difference pushes the interviewer out of complacent state of assumed empathic understanding. Namely, it is an analytic tool that helps qualitative interviewers recognize troubling moments of discomfort, distance, and difference, contextualize them within the social, cultural, and political situation, and interpret them without Othering the interviewees (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi, 2012). We found this concept to be analytically productive in capturing essential aspects of the role that the online setting plays in shaping the power relations in the OCBI we conduct.

Data Collection

The data collection in both of the original studies was designed to include face-to-face qualitative interviews. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 forced the authors to conduct OCBI instead.

Data Analysis

The analysis of the present study included 52 interviews that were recorded and transcribed verbatim and the reflective research notes that each interviewer recorded or wrote immediately following the interview or following its transcription. These notes documented the non-verbal communication in the interviews, such as gestures, body language, and expressions, as well as the interviewer’s thoughts and feelings throughout the interaction with the interviewees, from the initial contact to well after the interview was transcribed. Hence, the notes consisted rich and meaningful non-discursive data that was central to the analysis process.

The data analysis followed the steps proposed by Denzin (2001). After critically reviewing the literature on power relations in online interviews, we repeatedly read the transcripts of the interviews and the reflective research notes to gain an overall impression of how the online setting shaped the interviewer-interviewee dynamics. We then hand-coded them to identify themes related to the dynamics in the interview and concentrated on experiences related particularly to the power relations. As aforementioned, we found that the online setting yielded numerous surprising and unexpected events that shaped the atmosphere and the power relations. Accordingly, we used the concept of interview shocks (Sands & Krumer-Nevo, 2006) to deepen our understanding of the analysis process.

Throughout the research process, we conducted multiple continual discussions aimed at enriching and deepening our understanding and interpretation of the data, particularly with regard to the non-discursive data. Our joint discussions focused on untangling, interpreting, and thinking through the cues, nuances, gestures and expressions that were essential to shaping the power relations in the interviews. As we come from different disciplines and have varying levels of seniority, the collaborative analysis allowed us to step back from our own investment in the research topic and employ a critical attitude that eventually brought a diversity of perspectives into the analysis (Cornish et al., 2013). In addition, we were able to further explore potential linkages between the inductive themes we have identified and the conceptual framework, and how they both illuminate each another. Thus, these discussions led to a grouping and regrouping of the themes, until we reached a final conceptual framework of three categories of online interview shocks. Although the virtual setting was initially enforced due to the outbreak of Covid-19, we did not find that the global pandemic played a dominant contextual role in shaping the power relations in the interviews.

The analysis necessitated a critical reflexive observation of the interviewers’ positionality in the interviews (Macbeth, 2001). This further pointed to the centrality of the socio-cultural positions of the interviewer and the interviewees in shaping the power relations in the online interviews. We used Pillow’s (2003) practice of uncomfortable reflexivity, which continuously challenges, questions, and interrogates the truthfulness of the data and provides multiple and unfamiliar tellings about the “messy,” often unsuccessful, and uncomfortable reality of doing engaged qualitative research. Interpreting the data through the practice of uncomfortable reflexivity and the concept of interview shocks facilitated a profound understanding, which was strongly bounded to socio-cultural context, of how the online setting shaped the power relations in the OCBI we conducted.

Ethical Considerations

This study, as well as the original studies for which data was collected, was approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Boards (IRB). All the participants consented to the use of their interviews in the authors’ future research projects. We made efforts to remain as faithful as possible to the original meaning of the participants’ words; however, the participants were informed that the analysis might result in conclusions that were different from the participants’ own interpretations of their narrative. The audio files of the interviews were transcribed in full. All identifying details were omitted from the transcript, and all the names mentioned in the article are pseudonyms. We told the participants that they could terminate their participation at any time or refuse to answer certain questions without any adverse consequences, and we held a debriefing conversation at the end of each interview.

The Shocking Use of the Camera

The first type of online interview shock that we identified was the surprising and often unexpected use of the camera. As previously suggested, the freedom to choose the setting of the interview often makes OCBI more comfortable for interviewees and grants them a greater sense of power and control (Deakin & Wakefield, 2014). In this way, the online setting can potentially create more balanced power relations between interviewers and interviewees (Hanna, 2012). We found that interviewees’ ability to manipulate their performance through the camera—by deciding where to locate the camera, how to appear within the frame, and even if and when to turn the camera on—enhanced their position of power in the interviews. At the same time, interviewees sometimes used the camera in unusual and unexpected ways that shocked the interviewers. Contextualizing these shocks yielded a deeper understanding of these dynamics and how they shaped the power relations.

For example, at the beginning of author A’s interview with Lior (about his experiences in paying for sex), she was surprised to realize that he decided not to turn his camera on. Although the interview was scheduled as a video meeting, Lior was reluctant to be exposed and he chose to remain unseen. The online setting provided Lior the sense of control and confidence to (dis)appear as he wished. Moreover, the online setting facilitated the original opportunity for Lior to participate in the study, as he declined the invitation to participate in a face-to-face interview due to the fear of being exposed and shamed—a fear that men who pay for sex often experience (Lahav-raz et al., 2023).

Nonetheless, Lior’s deactivated camera caught the interviewer off-guard and left her confused. While she understood and respected Lior’s choice, she felt she was “losing grip” of the interview and was uncomfortable with the one-sided video. In a way, the shock of Lior’s decision transformed into the interviewer’s own shock in her reaction to it and her difficulty around being less in control. This indicates that although she hoped to create a more balanced power relationship with interviewees, she was in fact ambivalent—unconsciously—toward the possibility of waiving her powerful position, particularly in the context of the challenges of being a novice woman scholar interviewing men about their controversial sexual experiences (Prior & Peled, 2022).

Another example of camera-related interview shock occurred in author B’s interview with Hadeel, a Druze woman living in the Galilee region. ¹ In the course of the interview, Hadeel gave author B a tour of her house using the computer’s camera. She proudly showed her wide open and well-designed house and focused particularly on the porch, which offered a beautiful view. The tour occurred at the peak of the interview, after rapport had been established and the interviewer felt she was beginning to have a sense of who Hadeel was. The unexpected virtual tour surprised author B and resulted in a shift in the natural flow of the interview.

Author B’s shock at the tour was subtle, and it did not undermine her confidence in completing the interview, yet it did require some adjustments. Contextualizing the tour and the resulting shock, we suggest that Hadeel’s virtual tour can be seen as a performance of her material and cultural assets, particularly within her interaction as a woman belonging to the Israeli-Druze minority group ² with a Jewish interviewer. Within the intersecting identities that she possessed (Crenshaw, 1991), Hadeel seemed eager to reclaim her cultural capital and to object to the cultural marginalization she often experienced. Thus, inviting author B to tour her home was a symbolic gesture that rectified the imbalanced power relations between Hadeel and author B (Herzog, 2005). The online setting denied Hadeel the opportunity to present cultural assets that author B would have been exposed to if the interview had been conducted at Hadeel’s home. Therefore, we suggest that the tour reflected Hadeel’s attempt to socially position her cultural power within the power relations between her and an Israeli, Jewish, white, academic, woman interviewer.

Furthermore, unlike author A’s sense of loss of control, author B’s more subtle shock suggests that while she did not expect a tour in the interview, she was comfortable with the interviewee’s display of power. Being an experienced feminist scholar who studies less controversial topics (compared with author A) made author B more confident, and she welcomed and even encouraged the displays of power of interviewees in her study. Hence, her emotional reaction to the shocks shifted from a stressful and threatened shock to a welcome and subtle sense of surprise. All types of shocks can potentially provide new insights about the power relations. We suggest that the extent and the nature of the shock reflect aspects of the socio-cultural context that shape the power relations between interviewers and interviewees. Therefore, scholars should reflect on the uncomfortable and complicated (Pillow, 2003), as well as delicate and hard-to-recognize, dynamics that take place during OCBI.

The Shocking Presence of Others During the Online Interview

The second type of interview shock we identified is the interviewers’ shock at the unexpected presence of others during a “private” OCBI. To facilitate an intimate atmosphere where interviewees can narrate their stories openly and honestly, qualitative interviews are usually private. However, the online setting challenges this norm because interviewees are free to determine the conditions for the interview, specifically, their own location and the extent of privacy. Furthermore, interviewers might not be aware of others’ present during the interview since they are not in the same physical space as the interviewees. Discovering that others were present during the interview was found to be a shock for the interviewers in the present study, and contextualizing this type of shock uncovered meaningful aspects of the social context that shaped the power relations in these interviews.

During author B’s interview with Salma, a Bedouin woman journalist living in a small town in the Nagev region, ³ Salma was sitting outside her townhouse where the internet connection was stable. Quite early in the interview, Salma told author B that she had told her husband she was asked to participate in the study. A few minutes later, Salma noticed that her husband was approaching, and though she quickly “warned” author B, the latter was shocked when he arrived, stood in front of the camera, introduced himself, and “took over” the conversation. He told author B that he checked her background prior to the interview, implying that he would not have allowed Salma to participate if he had had a bad impression of author B. He then talked for over 20 min about the troubling conditions of Bedouin people in the Nagev and the powerlessness of the local authorities to change it. While he was talking, Salma set quietly next to him, outside the camera’s frame.

Author B sympathized with Salma’s husbands’ urge to speak out, recognizing that he belongs to an oppressed national and cultural minority group (Aburabia-Queder, 2017) in the Israeli “ethnic democracy,” which discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in terms of their socioeconomic, civil, and political rights (Smooha, 2017). Yet, despite her sympathy for Salma’s husband, author B was shocked and concerned. She was worried that she lost the opportunity to hear Salma’s story and did not know how to handle the husband’s “highjacking” of the interview. Eventually, Salma’s husband turned the camera over to Salma and entered the house. The interview continued without either of the parties directly addressing the “interruption.” While author B did not feel she could verbalize the event in real-time, she felt that both she and Salma silently understood that these were the implicit rules within which the interview took place (Lindlof & Taylor, 2017). Author B felt that by accepting the shocking situation and cooperating with Salma’s husband, she gave Salma confidence and laid the groundwork for a mutually gratifying conversation.

Another, more shocking, example of the presence of another person within the interview took place during author B’s online interview with Rivka, an ultra-Orthodox woman journalist. Author B felt that Rivka was being restrained in narrating an event in her work experience, specifically, her professional decision to leave a certain position. Half an hour after the interview ended, Rivka unexpectedly called author B and confessed, though she did not apologize, that her husband was present during the interview and therefore she was unable to speak freely. This confession completely surprised author B, who was shocked to learn that someone else heard what she considered to be a private conversation. Rivka then insisted on continuing the interview, as she wanted to complete her story and elaborate on the topic she had not mentioned earlier, in the presence of her husband.

Rivka’s confession created a sense of great closeness, and it helped author B to contextualize Rivka’s original, fragmented narrative. Furthermore, the shocking situation explicitly exemplified the unique constraints ultra-Orthodox women are often subjected to. On the one hand, telling her husband she wanted to be interviewed privately could have been considered disrespectful within the strict religious context of Rivka’s life (Layosh, 2014). On the other hand, being a strong and independent woman, Rivka was determined to create the conditions for the privacy she needed to narrate her story freely.

Contextualizing both examples shows that while the Bedouin and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minorities have experienced major socio-cultural changes that increase women’s opportunities for personal and professional development, women in these societies are still often subjected to patriarchal family structure (Aburabia-Queder, 2017; Neriya-Ben Shahar, 2019). Thus, it demonstrates how intersecting social locations operate together to shape the lived experience of marginalized women (Crenshaw, 1991). Both examples also show how marginalized women find ways to operate inside the restrictive boundaries of their culture. Salma and Rivka acted cautiously and respected the cultural norms they live in without giving up their subjectivity, their agency, and the opportunity to narrate their own story (Gubrium & Holstein, 2002). Hence, the shock of the presence of others challenged the assumptions that obedience/empowerment and surveillance/independence are dichotomies (Aburabia-Queder, 2017; El-Or, 1994; Neriya-Ben Shahar, 2019) by uncovering the co-existence of these features in the lives of marginalized individuals.

The Shocking Body Dispositions and Appearances

The third type of online interview shock we identified concerned interviewees’ unexpected body dispositions and appearances. The online setting is often characterized as less formal; interviewees are free to choose the locations of the interview and they usually feel less obligated to follow formal dress codes (Gray et al., 2020). The freedom to be interviewed on their own terms and in an informal setting can potentially give the interviewees a greater sense of power. Nonetheless, we found that informal body dispositions and appearances can surprise and discomfort interviewers.

For example, during her interview with Efi, a man who pays for sex, author A found that the inability to “zoom out” and see the interviewee’s whole body elicited a sense of discomfort. She later wrote in her research notes:

In the absence of full, bodily presence, author A was shocked and troubled by Efi’s appearance. In the context of interviewing Efi about his sex life, and particularly his controversial experiences with sex workers, the thought of him in his underwear or completely naked was stressful for author A. Although Efi gave no indication he would do such a thing, author A feared the possibility that, at any given moment, he would flash himself. She felt the online setting made it much easier for him to do so, and this undermined her ability to focus. Considering author A’s shock in the context of women’s fear of cyber gender-related harassments (Citron, 2009) reveals the online setting to be another important factor that shapes the already complicated power relations between women interviewers and men interviewees in interviews on controversial sexual behavior (Prior & Peled, 2022).

Furthermore, we also identified this type of online body appearance-related shock in cross-cultural interviews. Author B’s online interview with Maha, a young Israeli-Palestinian journalist, began with Maha’s camera turned off. At first, author B assumed Maha was having technical problems. However, Maha made it clear she was not prepared for a video talk. Author B felt uncomfortable, but gently asked Maha to turn on the camera so they would be able to see each other and have a more personal conversation. Author B also reassured Maha that only the audio recording would be saved. Nonetheless, Maha declined to turn the camera on, and she asked author B if she could return in 10 min because she needed time “to prepare” herself. Author B was confused, and it was only when they restarted and Maha appeared wearing her hijab that the interview actually began.

Author B was confused and unsure how to address Maha’s behavior. On the one hand, she perceived Maha’s act of suspending the interview altogether and turning the camera on only after she was wearing the Hijab to be a political statement (Mizel, 2020), intended to emphasize Maha’s position within complex Israeli-Palestinian relations. On the other hand, author B considered the possibility that while she perceived the online setting to be private and intimate, perhaps Maha perceived it as public. If this was the case, then for Maha, wearing Hijab while in public is simply a daily routine. Author B was afraid of misinterpreting Maha’s intentions, and therefore she avoided any direct references to the “misunderstanding”. This created a tense atmosphere at the beginning of the interview and challenged the building of rapport. Contextualizing this event in the Israeli socio-political context uncovers the complexity of cross-positional OCBI, which can bring new and unexpected dilemmas and challenges to interviewers.