The futures of qualitative research in the COVID-19 era: experimenting with creative and digital methods

With pandemic conditions and social distancing disrupting traditional research methods, the COVID-19 pandemic has left many researchers turning to digital and creative methods, perhaps for the first time. Despite the significant challenges qualitative researchers have faced during the pandemic, this chapter considers what potentials these conditions may offer for methodological experimentation and critical reflection on knowledge production practices. This chapter explores three case studies in which we used digital and creative research methods: a study exploring fitness practices during pandemic lockdown using a digital photo-diary method; a digital ethnography of the social media app TikTok that focused on health information sharing practices; and a project employing online creative writing workshops to elicit participants' feelings and practices concerning their personal data. Our approach is grounded in a vital materialist perspective, building on Indigenous and feminist scholarship, that argues for an understanding of bodies and objects as emerging from their relations. We argue that bringing together vital materialism with these innovative methods provides an opportunity to surface the ways digital objects and practices are always implicated in the formation of subjects. In this chapter, we argue that digital methods offer rich and unique insights beyond operating as a 'stand in' for traditional methods, instead calling us to attend to the more-than-human.