Methodological questions of fieldwork in organizational communication research: an approach from Goffman’s microsociology

Abstract

This paper discusses some methodological aspects of a field research conducted from August 2018 to February 2019, as part of a broader study about face to face communication in a company. It studied interactional episodes during 12 meetings of a project board, focusing on the micro-scale interactions. However, during the study, several methodological issues have arisen, some of them stirred by the works of Erving Goffman, which had provided some initial insights for field research: (a) is there a ‘goffmanian’ method for micro-observation? (b) How to observe the micro-scale events and simultaneously being part of it? (c) How to register the observation findings’ in a valid description of what have been seen? This paper addresses these questions as part of a epistemological discussion on communication research methods.