Data Recording and Ethical Considerations

This study includes two corpora of data. The first was recorded by a colleague between 30 April and 21 May 2007. The second set were recorded between 28 May and 22 June 2008. A total of 32 recordings were made, resulting in almost 24 hours of recorded interaction. Individual Skypecast recordings ranged from 15 minutes to just over 2 hours in length.

Skypecast listings were searched, relevant chat rooms were located, and the start dates and times noted. Upon joining the listening room of a Skypecast, permission to record was obtained from those present. At no point after obtaining permission to record did anyone involved in the study speak or request to speak. None of the participants were contacted or communicated with, other than later-joining participants, who were sent an IM in order to inform them of the recording and to request their permission to be recorded. None of the excerpts included in this study involve any researcher, save for one which is taken from the original corpus (and is indicated as such at the point of its presentation). When recordings were being made, the non-descript username ‘Skypecastfan’ was used. This non-participatory role was

intentional, in order to ensure that researcher influence on the interaction was a minimal as possible, thus ensuring the interaction was as ‘natural’ as possible (see the discussion in Section 3.1 on the principles of CA).

Even if participants were cognizant of their being recorded, any assumption of an ‘observer’s paradox’ – the belief that participants behave differently when the subject of sociological investigation – would be deemed not entirely problematic to the present study. As Goodwin (1981) points out, all participants at talk, whether recorded, observed or neither, behave as if they are being observe. That is, they organise their talk and social conduct in terms of those around them. Further than this, the object of this study is how participants maintain and manage their mutual

understanding, and this could be analysed even if/when participants talk about the experience of being recorded. As Hosoda (2006) puts it, in such cases “the structural organisation of [participants’] interaction remains unaffected (p. 30).

During recording, all spoken interaction between participants was captured. However, it was not possible to obtain access to participant’s private IMs to one another. This was not considered to be wholly problematic in the analysis of

interaction, as this placed the researcher in the same position as the participants, that is, in having access only to the knowledge that was public to the room. In other words, messages were private between sender and receiver, and remained so unless one of them made information regarding the exchange publicly available through their verbal conduct (which did occur on occasion, as will be shown throughout Chapter 7).

Of course, it was not possible to have access to what each individual Skypecast participant was doing in their own home as they were connected to the chat room. As such, it was not always possible to understand what some sounds, actions (or lack of), etc. were in response to, or caused by. Again, all that was available was that which was publicly available to the Skypecast room. Anything else – such as whether a participant is reading emails, looking out of his/her window, eating something, etc. – can not be known. This may be seen as a limitation of the study, although a counter- argument to that has been presented. In addition, it should be acknowledged that no investigation of naturally-occurring social life can be all-encompassing; in the words of Sacks:

The tape-recorded materials constituted a ‘good enough’ record of what happened. Other things, to be sure, happened, but at least what was on the tape had happened.(1984: 26)

Recordings were made using Pamela, a Skype-certified software program. Once installed, Pamela automatically records all verbal exchanges made through Skype. Prior to the commencement of this, Pamela plays a verbal message, announcing to all participants that recording will begin. In addition, all participants are sent a written message. This message was edited from its original version, specifying that the recordings were being made in order to “conduct research on Skypecast

conversations”. Any participants who joined the Skypecast after recording had begun were also informed by written message. Only on one occasion did a participant object to being recorded. This participant joined in after recording had begun, and recording was immediately stopped upon his objection.

Another consideration for the privacy of the participants is the anonymisation of usernames. Although participants typically adopted a pseudonym for their Skype username, this was at times ambiguous. Similarly, there were times within the spoken exchange when ‘real’ names were used. As such, all names used in this thesis are neither the username nor real name of any of the participants.

During recordings, and in subsequent listenings, notes were made regarding some demographic information of the participants, such as their nationality. This was done in order to aid in identifying which voice belonged to which interactant.

Additional notes were made, particularly in later listenings in order to highlight points of potential interest.