From Interview to Transcript to Story: Elucidating the Construction of Journalistic Narrative As Qualitative Research

There is a call to narrative investigators to be more explicit about their ways of working methodologically, in particular concerning dialogic/performative analysis. The purpose of this study was to examine how journalistic storytelling used as qualitative health research transformed, assembled and sequenced interview into transcripts, scenes, digressions, and other language products. A published story from a socio-narratological study of living with the terminal disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis was selected. Distribution and sequence of modes of transcription, versions of dialogue, transformation of observation and memory to scenes, and conversion of the researcher’s reflection to digression, were identified and calculated. Spots in the story conveying the researcher’s imaginations were identified. Three modes of transcription were found. Differences between recorded and published dialogue were demonstrated. The construction of a scene and a digression from notes and transcript was shown. Sequencing of narrative techniques was illustrated. Twenty-two spots of imagination were highlighted. The full, published story itself served as discussion by elucidating how selected parts of interview and context became a story through varying narrative constructions. The highlighted imaginations composed a poetic conclusion resonating the intellectual and bodily experience of the interview.