Today, I spoke with a victim of doxxing over CleanFeed, a website that allows you to conduct audio calls by connecting over the internet via an email address. The quality of the recording was perfect and the interview went really well (over an hour long!) but it was also very thought provoking in a number of ways.
The topic of doxxing can be an extremely personal and traumatising to a victim, in today's conversation particularly. We spoke about very sensitive topics and even had to go 'off the record' for parts of it. Towards the beginning the conversation was slightly rigid and formal, I could feel my interviewee was not quite opening up fully - understandable given the circumstances.
This made me think a lot about the familiarity and comfort that can form when an interview is done face-to-face or even via Zoom; the person being interviewed can sense the sensitivity in my tone, they can see my reactions when they speak and the encouraging smiles as we talk. This of course is not possible over the phone and I don't think I'd quite realised that until today.
Instead, I had to find other ways to let the speaker know she could trust me. These included: offering anonymity, reminding her we can stop at any point and that anything can be off the record, and mainly by opening up about what happened to me. The latter conveyed a level of empathy, I think, that helped the speaker open up to me fully.
As the interview progressed, we became much better acquainted and spoke in depth about the context surrounding her story, delving into the thought processes of the people who doxxed her. It was a very interesting conversation that I'm very grateful for, even if it couldn't be in person I think it turned into an excellent contribution for the documentary.
Although, I've got my work cut out for me when I begin to edit a 7.25 hour conversation down to fit into a 7 minute piece..
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