Who benefits from synchronous online communication?: A comparison of face-to-face and synchronous online interviews with children

This paper is based on experiences from three different research projects in which both face-to-face (f2f) and synchronous online (IM) interviews were used, and it discusses what different media can mean to different respondents. The interviewees were between 10 and 16 years old. The analyses were made from transcripts of 25 f2f interviews and 23 IM interviews. The flow of the dialogue and the amount of words used has been analysed. The answers were longer in f2f interviews, but in f2f interviews the boys had the longest answers, and in the IM interviews the girls wrote the longest answers.