Reluctance of Interviewees
‘Yarralumla Home Office’
I’ve now compiled a detailed list of the interviewees (confirmed participants) and the general setup, tools, backups and so on. I’ve also struck upon another issue that I’d wished I’d been informed of prior to engaging in a semi-structured interview format.
To do’s;
Write about the ‘reluctance’ of interviewees including who declined to be interviewed;
[ removed ] was repeatedly not contactable despite immediate response for all IASTAS’13 preparations through his PR team;
Those who didn't wish to be identified for cultural, privacy and personal security reasons;
Those who didn't wish to be recorded ie. Professor Teemu Leinonen;
Those who wanted everything to be transmitted live rather than a written transcript!
As per my conversation as Researcher with [ removed ] about those who don’t wish to be identified, well … it isn’t ideal at all! In fact, given the inordinate amount of effort I went to include them in this research I now understand why the disappointment of constantly referring to ‘Interviewee 39’ means some researchers just chop out the non-identifiables altogether or completely anonymise the entire interviewees list completely.
This creates an awareness for the Researcher that will be written into the Interview chapter, that of the reluctance of people to engage in formal discourse where they could be seen to be speaking "away" from their own socio-technocratic indulgent selves. It often happens with those people under constraint of their employer, their position in government and their own personal lives which hinge on them having a technology permeated existence on an hour by hour basis.
The Researcher gets them aside to have a conversation and ask them the drilling questions that I have and what does it reveal? It reveals that they have in fact great reservations about technology and its impact on their own lives and yet they contradict themselves and trip over their own position when it comes to standing by what they said in a probing interview.
