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participants prior to an online interview commencing, ongoing development of rapport throughout the research process becomes crucial. As mentioned earlier, establishing good rapport and “getting to know” participants may help maximize levels of confidence in the authenticity of the accounts they offer during the course of an interview. Anonymity, Disclosure, Social Desirability Establishing good rapport with participants has been found to work well for researchers who have devised carefully considered strategies for this, and rapport building is thus advised as good practice. However, this principle may sit somewhat uncomfortably alongside evidence that the heightened levels of anonymity typical in online interview contexts (compared to FTF approaches) can confer benefits. The IMR interview setting is interesting in the way that it supports fairly fluid and fluent levels of interaction—in the form of verbal exchanges either asynchronously or in real time—while at the same time offering a high degree of privacy due to the lack of visual cues and physical presence (in non-multimedia applications) (e.g., Hewson et al., 2003). This holds intrigue in terms of its implications and possible effects compared with traditional FTF interview contexts. There is some evidence that computer-mediated communication (CMC) contexts can lead to higher levels of self-disclosure than FTF contexts (e.g., Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002; Joinson, 2001), as well as to reduced levels of socially desirable responding (e.g., Joinson, 1999). Such effects may conceivably transfer to the online interview setting. Evidence that this may be the case comes from reports of both online asynchronous (e.g., Murray & Sixsmith, 1998) and synchronous (e.g., Madge & O’Connor, 2002) interview contexts. There is also evidence that enhanced candor and self-disclosure effects may be constrained to visually anonymous CMC contexts (Joinson, 2001), thus suggesting possible benefits to using solely text-based interview contexts as opposed to multimedia applications using video. This may be a useful point to bear in mind when dealing with research contexts involving particularly sensitive or personal topics in which participants may naturally be less predisposed to disclose and offer highly personal information (but note the possible tension here with the enhanced importance of verifying personal characteristics, such as age, in highly sensitive research contexts). Whether adopting clear, focused rapport-building strategies may serve to reduce perceived levels of anonymity and thus possibly reduce levels of candor and disclosure by participants requires further research, but the experiences of researchers such as O’Connor and Madge (2003), who established high levels of rapport and collected rich, detailed data, would appear to indicate that this is not an issue. Overall, there is some compelling evidence that the online medium may lead to higher levels of self-disclosure of sensitive and personal information (see also Joinson & Paine, 2007), although the extent to which this is particularly linked to perceived higher levels of anonymity requires some further investigation. Other advantages stemming from the arguably more “detached” or anonymous setting of the online interview include the possible balancing out of power relationships (both between researcher and participants and between participants; e.g., in a focus group), due in part perhaps to greater levels of anonymity and also to greater levels of participant control over when to respond (e.g., Madge & O’Connor, 2002). This may arguably lead to a “democratization” in online communication, due to participants often not being readily aware of each other’s sex, skin color, regional accent, and the like; it has been suggested that this may potentially balance out power relationships that can exist offline, where all these cues and sources of information are readily available (Illingworth, 2001). However, questions have been raised about the extent to which this idea is realistic (Mann & Stewart, 2000). For example, linguistic style—also evident in purely text-based communications—has been highlighted as potentially able to offer rich clues about a person’s attributes, identity, and characteristics, including gender (e.g., Herring, 1996), socioeconomic status, nationality, and so on. Still, in the context of the online interview, it is certainly quite plausible that heightened levels of privacy, anonymity, and flexibility in responding in one’s own timeframe and at a location of one’s choosing may well empower participants beyond attending a FTF on-site setting determined by the researcher (e.g., Illingworth, 2001). This may lead to enhanced motivation for participants and researchers to act as “co-researchers” and increase the scope for participants to become active in the interpretive process (Murray & Sixsmith, 1998). Ward (1999) has suggested that these features of the online interview environment might also encourage greater levels of researcher reflexivity, for example, by encouraging interviewees to direct more probing and bold questions to the researcher. Of course, participant Hewson 431 empowerment may emerge from the online mode of interaction by enabling participation by groups who may otherwise be largely excluded or find it particularly difficult to participate in offline FTF contexts (e.g., due to travel constraints, etc.). For some participants, opportunities to participate and have a “voice” may thus be enhanced by the online access medium; this could include, for example, the new mothers interviewed by Madge and O’Connor (2002) or people with physical disabilities (Bowker & Tuffin, 2004).