Organisation of Interviews

Participants were accessed through personal contact details (i.e. telephone, email) or through social networking channels and groups, such as Facebook (a group

‘Russian mums in London’; ‘Marylebone Mums’), Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte (Russian social media platforms). Most of the participants were passed through the contacts of other mums who agreed and were willing to take part in the research. Detailed diary notes were taken in order to keep track of progress and arranging new interviews at convenient days and times for participants. It was especially useful as time conversion was necessary due to the time differences between London and Moscow.

Interviews with participants in London were conducted face-to-face (in most cases in home settings, which stimulated a relaxed atmosphere for the participant and easy-going conversation). Interviews with Russian Mums in Moscow were conducted via Skype calls. Prior to each interview all participants were provided with the Participant Information Sheet and Consent Form that reduced the introductory time to five minutes before the start of each interview. Most of the interviews were audio recorded with only a few cases where participants did not consent to be recorded due to personal reasons. Detailed written notes were taken for each interview.

5.3.1.4 Organisation of Interviews

The interview consisted of two main stages. In Stage 1 a small set of questions was asked in order to acquire the profile characteristics of the participant and also some questions to stimulate thinking around the topic that would follow. The Table 16 below contains examples of questions and themes involved.

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Table 16 Stage 1 Interview Questions

• Age; Education; Occupation; Number of Children; Age of Child (ren);

Marital status; Where is she originally from (*for RMiL group only).

• Social class (this is one of exceptional questions which was not asked directly, instead throughout the images provided each participant directly or indirectly was referring to her own belongingness of one or another social class).

• Participants were also asked to clarify whether they are reading, following or simply interested in any parenting or mother and baby magazines.

• The next questions ware linked to their attitude towards the advertisements in general and how often they pay attention to ads that are designed specifically for mothering and baby care.

• Next I referred to motherhood topic itself. Participants were asked to describe the feelings, words, associations or images that come first to their mind when they hear the word “mother” or “motherhood”. This particular question was again rendered from the comments received from pilot study participants as well as confirmed by control group to be a good starting point that provided a boost in thinking reminding themselves of their own image as well as the image of their own mothers sometimes.

In Stage 2 images were passed to mothers for exploration and evaluation of their perspectives on them. Observations of emotional reaction, non-verbal communication, body language and facial expression were taken into consideration for the contextualisation of data gathered. Each image was treated as a singular case (no repetitive or similar images were used). There was always an emotional and non-verbal reaction to each photo before any verbal expression of their feelings, what they liked or disliked about the figure portrayed and whether they associated with the model. Mothers often tried to justify (based on their beliefs and experience) whether or not the models were a realistic reflection of motherhood. The whole focus of the discussion was never considered to be the image, rather the themes emerging formed the story of a participant and their unique approach of perceiving media messages. This helped to understand how ideologies of motherhood are reproduced by actually characterising social reality and socially accepted symbolic power (see Chapter 7 for more details).

148 5.3.2. The Researcher’s Voice in the Interview Process.

In this subsection I want to reflect on my own role as a researcher and how being a mother contributed towards gaining participants’ ‘trust’ and ‘willingness’ to openly share their stories and motherhood experiences with me. We (junior researchers) often find ourselves puzzled after reading numerous methodology textbooks and often struggle in identifying the best ways of constructing interview themes, arranging and running interviews and most importantly trying to find a way of ‘distancing’ ourselves from our participants. What we often ‘fear’ (i.e.

influencing interviewees’ answers, stories etc.) can actually turn into a strength, which I experienced as a positive outcome of my study.

When it comes to social research, Oakley (1981: 31) describes interviewing as a

“marriage: everybody knows what it is, an awful lot of people do it, and yet behind each closed front door there is a world of secrets”. I want to emphasise my ‘secret’

was me being a mother and perhaps understanding my participants better. As I was observing the interview process and re-listening to the audio recordings of my pilot interviews I could clearly sense the difference and change in conversation as soon as my participants learned that I was a mother of two. It is incredible how the legitimacy and the sense of belongingness to the ‘mums’ club’ significantly shifted towards open conversations and relaxed atmosphere, where the person sitting opposite to you ‘trusts’ you enough simply because you are one of them.

There was an element of supreme empowerment as well. My target audience in this instance were wonderful mothers who are almost always busy with everything and for whom it is not always possible to spare time for extra activity (i.e. participating in a long interview conducted by an overseas researcher). What I found fascinating and very empowering is my participants’ comments on how they were more sympathetic to participation based on both my topic, their interest and knowing that I am a mother who is working on a PhD research. This increased the snowballing effect and allowed me to have a wonderful experience with numerous mothers and most certainly boosted my confidence.

149 5.3.3. Interview Analysis

The data gathered was first transcribed and then, where necessary, translated from Russian to English (this was applicable to RMiM and RMiL groups). The responses were then organised and grouped first by images and then regrouped according to the archetypal category and theme they belonged to (such as

‘patriarchal family’, ‘mother-daughter unity’, more on this in Chapter 7).

The inductive approach helped to organise the findings according to the thematic analysis. Themes initially emerged based on the category of archetypal advertisements, then the content shared by participants was linked with the theoretical background and the research questions. In order to elaborate on the meanings and ideologies reproduced by Russian mothers, the sections first refer to the advertisements and critical visual content analysis outcomes, then integrate the responses of the mothers and link the content with the theoretical assumptions (see Chapter 7).

The narratives of the Russian mothers were subsequently linked with the theory and observed patterns to enabled me to highlight both findings and implications.

To optimise and rationalise the presentation of findings, I clustered the results into three overarching themes (i.e. family structure mothering ideology; physical traits based mothering ideology; mother-child unity ideology), with integrated sub-themes that provide clear links with the theoretical framework of the study and systematically build answers to the research questions. This is presented in detail in chapter 7.

5.4. Summary

This chapter provides an overall image and details of the research philosophy, design and methods applied for both data collection and analysis. It signifies the multi-method approach used to meet the research objectives. As a result, the study

150 adopts Phase 1 to understand the production of motherhood ideology through print media advertising, and Phase 2 research designs to elaborate on the reproduction of motherhood ideology by Russian mothers and its impact on their consumption preferences.

Section 5.2 introduces the data collection approach and techniques implemented for conducting critical visual and content analysis of magazine advertisements. It gives a step by step evaluation and use of an analytical model that serves not only to understand the iconography of motherhood in print media, but also helps to categorise multiple archetypal advertisements that were later adopted in the fieldwork interviews.

This chapter also highlighted how Phase 1 aids Phase 2 and evaluates the transition from one phase into another (see Figure 6). It demonstrated the process of data reduction and the use of images as part of the photo-elicitation method for interviews. Here I brought to light the participant selection methods and introduce the three groups of participants based on their location. I also provide insights on the techniques and procedures carried out during the data collection and analysis.

The next chapters focus on the findings and outcomes of the analysis conducted.

The findings are divided into two separate chapters, whereby Chapter 6 focuses on exhibiting the descriptive outcomes of the Phase 1 visual content analysis of images; and Chapter 7 presents the outcomes of the meta-analysis (i.e. visual content analysis of the archetypal advertisements and the photo-elicitation interview findings).

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Chapter 6 Phase 1 Critical Visual and Content