From Marienthal to Digital Methods: Audio Diaries By Using Whatsapp in Social Research

The Diaries Method has been used since the so-called Golden Age in studies like the one of Marienthal (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld & Zeisel, 1933), but today, thanks to the help of digital technologies, this method has evolved into a tool that can make it possible to overcome lots of limitations relating to social research, including the well-known problem of intrusiveness. In a society completely immersed in the digital world (Lupton, 2015), where the distinction between online and offline social life has become increasingly porous (Pink, 2009), using in research strategies tools of daily use in people’s lives can both contribute to get respondents closer to the world of research and to give social researchers new tools to study important facets that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Furthermore, it is possible to summarize the evolution, or “revolution”, of this method in a greater involvement of the interviewees in the object of research and in the reduction of social desirability. Specifically, in this study has emerged that social desirability can decrease thanks to the proximity of respondents to the tool used. Moreover, using instant messaging Apps, such as WhatsApp, it is possible to re-think the relationship between researcher and interviewee and to consider new possibilities for integrated research strategies. By analyzing both the audio diaries and the meta-interviews of a study on workers’ life domains relationship, it has also emerged that one of the greatest strengths of the use of the instant messaging service is that it makes possible to record moods and facets that most traditional research methods wouldn’t been able to detect: allowing the interviewee to decide when and how to record an audiodiary ensures that the instrument is camouflaged with the usage of WhatsApp for other aspects of daily life.