Last week when we left off at the Daniel’s Spectrum, group members of the Resilience and Faith group Nashat Nawar, Tracy Ikpekhia and Sama Abbas had just identified their project theme “Faith Amidst the Crisis of Tenant Displacement” and were off to a good start. This week, the group began developing interview questions and started the search for interview participants!
When class began at the University of Toronto (UofT) St. George Campus, Professor Mehta walked students through the differences and similarities between academic and journalistic interviews. The students found that while academic interviews seem to focus mostly on data collection for the purpose of proving or disproving a hypothesis, journalistic interviews tend to take on a narrative arc through which individual voices are highlighted to a high degree. In fact, while structured journalism requires the development of a narrative, academic studies focus mainly on the processes of collecting and analyzing information (Lopezosa et al., 2023). Additionally, Professor Mehta walked the groups through expectations for how qualitative interviews are typically formatted. She mentioned that while beginning introduction questions provide the opportunity for breaking the ice between the interviewer and interviewee allowing for core questions to be answered comfortably, it is important to ask afterthought questions following the interview to add on to its depth.
In preparing for interviews, the team tried to craft introduction, core and after thought questions that conveyed both academic and journalistic angles. For instance, while personal questions such as “how does faith play a role in navigating your daily life? Were included, the team also made sure to include questions such as “why do you think tenants experiencing displacement seek help and support from religious institutions?” to assess the general perceptions of the community on how religious leaders and institutions in Regent Park act as a source of support amidst the crisis of tenant displacement.
After crafting the research questions, it was time to begin contacting people who would be interested in participating in interviews for the project. However, Sama let the group know that we would be met with a bit of difficulty; given that at the time of working on this project it is currently the month of Ramadan, this would pose as a bit of a challenge for us in contacting the Imams at Masjidur Rahmah since the people in positions of leadership are typically quite busy at this time of the year. Thankfully, Nashat knew of a UofT student living in Regent Park heavily engaged in work with the Muslim community and he was able to connect us with people with leadership positions in Masjid Omar Bin Khatab. While in class it was discussed that this mosque typically consists of a high Somali population, it strives to foster unity and belonging among a diverse community of members (Masjid Omar Bin Khatab, n.d.).
One of the contacts he shared was of the daughter of one of the Imams at Masjid Omar Bin Khatab who helps with facilitating programs for women at the Mosque. The team is hoping to conduct an interview with her on March 11th alongside an Imam at the Mosque. In preparation for this interview, preliminary research on the history of Masjid Omar Bin Khatab in Regent Park will be conducted. As Tracy’s specialty is film, she is particularly very excited about taking B-roll shots at the Mosque and working her camera magic!
Stay tuned to hear all about the process of this semi-structured interview next week! For an inside scoop on our planning process for the interview, please see this clip of one of our interview planning meetings.
References
Lopezosa, C., Codina, L., Fernández-Planells, A., & Freixa, P. (2023). Journalistic innovation: How new formats of digital journalism are perceived in the academic literature. Journalism, 24(4), 821-838.
Masjid Omar Bin Khatab. (n.d.). Majid Omar Bin Khatab. https://masjidomarbinkhatab.ca/
The team members of Resilience and Faith are Tracy Ikpekhia, Sama Abbas and Nashat Nawar.