Day: February 14, 2017

Brandon Stanton says he must “steer the conversation away from pre-constructed answers” while interviewing people, and wants the honest truth, not what the interviewees think the right answer is. How can I point out the honest truth and steer the conversation? I feel I’ll understand once the interviews occur but I’m not exactly 100%. What if I try to steer their answers and it turns out to be a disaster? How do I steer their answers to honest answers with an invisible hand?

During the interview, Stanton wants to understand the person and not to squeeze him/her into a political category. If the class is interviewing people with an issue in mind, we will have policy ideas that they will fit in to. I thought I should ask questions about their lives that don’t pertain to any policy issues I previously had in mind, and maybe I would understand the individual just a bit more. Thoughts anyone?

While I watched the ethnography video, I kept thinking how I have to speak to strangers and how can I make them feel comfortable when I will most definitely not be comfortable. I know the interviewee must be comfortable for reliable data to be told. But what do I do? Fluff up a pillow for them and let them know I’m nervous as well? I understand the video but understanding what to do and actually doing it are completely different. At the end of the video, Colleen Murray suggests to watch other interviewers to see the ethnography process. I probably need a run through of an interview process, for example, to understand what transitions words to use, but not transition words that will make the rapport weaker.

The video also suggested that interviewers can’t just observe what their interviewees are saying, but the interviewers must participate with the interviewees. But if I’m interviewing people about human trafficking or homelessness, I can’t participate as they are forced to work and I can’t sleep with the homeless overnight (I mean I could but not if I just met them). I don’t want to butcher their stories. How do I work my way around that and truly understand my interviewees if I can’t participate?

The main thing that I took away from watching these videos was how much attention must be placed on making the subject of your interview as comfortable as possible. While that is something that seems obvious to most people, I never realized how many little things can possibly lead to you either offending or scaring the person you are interviewing, as well as many other effects you can have on your subject. In the “Getting People to Talk” video, there were a plethora of things that were pointed out as terrible things to do. Amongst them were reacting strongly to something that was said (like when one of the interviewers was so shocked that the woman he was interviewing was only 24), nodding your head too much/repeating words such as ‘yea’ ‘uh-huh’, in addition to other things that could lead to you subject losing their comfort with you.

In the interview with Brandon Stanton, he mentioned briefly that he never looks to have an agenda and then fit the people he interviews into it. He feels that in order to get the best out of people he has to have one interest only and that is them; meaning, he focus all his attention on the individual and nothing else. This also shows the importance he places on making sure your subject gets the sense you care about them and making sure they are comfortable.

Another thing spoken about in “Getting People to Talk” was how to set up the room (i.e. how many cameras, recorders, people should be there for the interview), who the subject should be allowed to give the interview with, etc. Once again, the main focus is all on doing whatever can be done to ensure that the person sitting across from you, or next to you, doesn’t feel the least bit uneasy.

After completing both videos, I left with more of a sense of just how important it is to do everything in your capabilities to make sure the subject of your interview feels extremely comfortable with you and their surroundings. Just saying one misplaced word, or not saying something when you should, or nodding your head a few times too many, are just some of the things that can turn a potentially golden interview into one in which the person is now not as comfortable and therefore not going to share as much information as they would have.