From not asking the “right” question to feeling the pressure of being recorded, I think digital interviews have various limitations when trying to document the history of COVID-19 and personal experiences. Since the goal of our project is to collect as many perspectives as possible, I’ve had the opportunity to interview Carleton students from various backgrounds who all have handled the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways. Despite the diversity in responses, one similarity within all these conversations is the behavior of students’ when the interview officially starts. Every time I click the record button on Zoom, the interaction shifts from a more casual conversation to a seemingly rigid set of responses. Even though I don’t have much experience facilitating these types of discussions, and there are ways I could improve how I conduct the interview, I think there is a personal element lost through this form of documentation. It’s not that the information from these interviews isn’t enlightening or important for public memory, but I feel partially unsatisfied by this subtle shift in conversation that occurs when the interview starts.
I hope that as I continue to conduct these interviews, the flow of conversation will become more natural, portraying a realistic image of the interviewee, but in some ways, I’m not sure if this is possible. When I asked a friend about this subject, she said that it’s almost impossible to completely capture an individual and their experiences through recorded interviews over Zoom, which is why preserving art created during this time is so important. She mentioned that a painting, film, picture, etc. has the power to portray aspects of the self and its surroundings, which can’t be captured by answering a set of questions. I still believe that conducting and documenting these interviews with Carleton students is important, but there are limitations with both my experience and this form of preservation, which detracts a sense of character from the interviewee, possibly restricting the audience’s ability to empathize with the content of the video.
