Hi Carmen, Willem and AoIRers I also used MSN and other chat programs to interview mainly young people who used ecstasy and other recreational drugs. My participants and I also found the instant messaging format worked well for discussing sensitive topics. You mentioned the need to use online interviewing so your participants could speak with you as a female from outside their family circle. I found that some of my younger online interviewees were amused to discover I was 10-15 years older than them as the interview progressed. The lack of visual cues can assist the building of rapport in some of these situations! Willem, I didn't know about your work - it was interesting to read about your approach to the Stormfront group. I'm writing about both those methodological issues regarding the online forums in my work (drug user groups) so will let you and the list know when it's available to read. Carmen, I would recommend reading the following papers which I have found particularly useful: Ayling, R., & Mewse, A. J. (2009). Evaluating Internet interviews with gay men. Qualitative Health Research, 19(4), 566-576. Dunkels, E., & Enochsson, A. (2007). Interviews with young people using online chat. In M. Quigley (Ed.), Encyclopedia of information ethics and security (pp. 403-410). Hersley: Idea Group Reference. Kazmer, M. M., & Xie, B. (2008). Qualitative interviewing in internet studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method. Information, Communication and Society, 11, 257-278. Al-Saggaf, Y., & Williamson, K. (2004). Online communities in Saudi Arabia: Evaluating the impact on culture through online semi-structured interviews. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 5(3). Voida, A., Mynatt, E. D., Erickson, T., & Kellogg, W. A. (2004, April 24–29). Interviewing over instant messaging. Paper presented at the CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria. see http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=986060 Also, I would love to read the following paper on this issue, but cannot get access to it. Can anyone else on this list get the full text for this article below? If you can, I would be most grateful if you were able to email it to me. Thanks! van Eeden-Moorefield, B., Proulx, C. M., & Pasley, K. (2008). A comparison of Internet and face-to-face (ftf) qualitative methods in studying the relationships of gay men. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 4(2), 181-204. Kind regards, Monica -- Monica Barratt BSc(Psych); PhD in progress... National Drug Research Institute Melbourne, Victoria, Australia http://preview.tinyurl.com/lwyyzq