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In January Qualitative Research published my new article called ‘Vibes-based Methods‘. I joked about writing this article for long enough, and the idea kind of haunted me for a few years, so eventually last year I sat down and wrote it. And it does start out a bit jokingly; the introduction starts:

When I was fourteen, everyone started saying LOL out loud ironically, and now I am thirty-three and cannot shake it: I lol without irony. In many academic circles, ‘vibe’ seems to have had a similar recent trajectory. At nearly every academic discussion I have attended in recent years someone has summarised their interest as being the vibe of something (whichever event or phenomenon we are there to discuss). First, vibe came with a smirk and attracted the spattering of knowing, nerdy laughter you get at a scholarly event when someone appropriates contemporary teen lingo. Now, vibes have taken on a life of their own. If you have young people in your life, encounter youth culture via TikTok or Instagram Reels, or read about such things in places like The Guardian (Zhou, 2023), you will already know that vibes have been big lately.

I also offer a background on vibes by way of some amusing pieces I found in the archives of The New Yorker. This includes a tongue-in-cheek late-1960s piece about a commune headed up by a young man named Michael Metelica who seemed to be using the whole thing as a way to kickstart his music career.

So, the article starts in a kind of silly way, intentionally, as it feels silly to be writing an actual scholarly article about vibes, but I do then take vibes seriously after that.

It interests me that academics keep using the term to speak about what they’re interested in. This feels like slightly more than general slang. Vibes seem to really resonate with what we’re doing as social researchers, and how we’re trying to go about our work today.

I examine some interesting methodological scholarship from various social research fields and focus on engagements with three big conceptual trends: affects and atmospheres; social and sociotechnical imaginaries; and new materialisms and more-than-human theory. Each of these concepts chime with vibes in various ways and so the kinds of methods that people are using to engage with them are also very vibey. This includes methods like object elicitation in interviews, ethnography, and creative participatory workshops. The main part of the article moves across these three conceptual umbrellas, looking at different methodological approaches that people align with them, and tease out what vibes-based methods seem to involve or might necessitate.

Really key for me, and what I work towards at the end of the article, is the generative ambiguity within the idea of vibes. Vibes evade easy definition. The term evokes an ambiguity. How people use vibes to speak to a generative ambiguity says something interesting about social life and social research. Much of the research I discuss in the article grapples with ambiguity in one way or another. Scholars use vibes to convey that something was driven by a loose sense, hunch or intuition, something less than a coherent rational or logical process.

In essence, I’ve written this piece to try and contribute to how we understand, approach and work productively with ambiguity in qualitative research.

The article concludes:

Vibes-based methods may open a way for qualitative researchers to grapple differently with ambiguity, and work in ways that reflect the generative ambiguities of the social world. This ambiguousness seems to be an increasing or particular feature of the present moment, if we see the rise of vibes as having a deeper social and cultural significance. With these methods, we may co-create research encounters and bring a vibey sensibility to our craft, one that enables us to better vibe with ambiguities.

I’ve also written a brief accompanying article in The Conversation about vibes too. This is called ‘Vibes are something we feel but can’t quite explain. Now researchers want to study them‘. This is very light-touch on the methodological and conceptual meat of the academic article, but writing it did force me to try and articulate simply why vibes and ambiguity are significant for researchers to contend with. What I landed on was that vibes are common feelings and ambivalence is key to our everyday decision-making processes. I wrote:

Language is a central part of qualitative research. While new phrases and slang can be casual and superficial, they can also represent broader, more complex concepts. Vibe is a great example of this: a simple term that refers to something potent yet ephemeral, affecting yet ambiguous.

By paying attention to the words people use to describe their experiences, sociologists can identify patterns of social interactions and shifts in social attitudes.

Perhaps vibes work like a heuristic – a mental shortcut – but for feeling rather than thinking.

People use heuristics to make everyday decisions or draw conclusions based on their experiences. Heuristics are, in essence, our common sense. And “vibes” might be best described as our common feeling, as they speak to a subtle aspect of how we collectively relate and interact.

Sociologists have long studied complex common feelings. Ambivalence, for instance, has been a focus in research on digital privacy. Studying when and why people feel ambivalent about digital technology can help us understand their seemingly contradictory behaviour, such as when they say they are concerned about privacy, but do very little to protect their information.

Ambivalence reveals how people make decisions via small, everyday compromises – moments and feelings that may be overlooked in quantitative research.

The Conversation article is of course free to read online.

The academic article in Qualitative Research is also open access, so free for anyone to read too.