Online Interviews as Feminist Practice: Insights on Navigating Research Relationships with Digital Feminist Artists

This case study is based on research that explored the experiences of digital feminist artists. The research worked from a feminist perspective and employed online unstructured interviews to examine how digital feminist artists produce their work, how they experience online platforms, and how their work matters to feminism. Online unstructured interviews proved to be the most advantageous method of data collection for three main reasons. First, this method is well situated within a feminist epistemological position, emphasizing women’s experiences as legitimate ways of knowing. Secondly, online interviews allowed access to a hidden and geographically dispersed population. Finally, online unstructured interviews provided an important and unexpected space for the negotiation of power between researcher and participant, furthering the feminist potential of this methodological approach. Through a thematic analysis, the research argued that digital feminist artists embody a quiet resistance in their negotiations with online spaces and within their art. This case study demonstrates how online unstructured interviews are a valuable method for feminist researchers, as they allow inclusive and accessible spaces which foster a challenge to traditional power dynamics within research processes.