“Mutual Sustenance”: Co‐constructing the Foundation for Vulnerability in the Participant/Researcher Relationship through an Ethnographic Study of Vehicle Residents' Information Practices

Abstract

Information Science (IS) researchers and practitioners aim to understand information seeking and needs across vulnerable communities. These relationships possess insider and outsider dynamics between researchers and participants. To foster vulnerability, trust, and empathy in the research process and to meet participants where they are in the research process, it may be beneficial for IS researchers to incorporate and consider concepts like reflexivity and positionality. The concept of the “vulnerable observer” (Behar, 1997) was implemented to frame the humanization of the researcher through an ethnographic study of vehicle residents as a vulnerable population. The relationships developed with participants serve as the grounds for which vulnerability can flourish through the utilization of safe environments. A safe, familiar environment for the participant is an important ingredient to produce trust and reciprocity. Reciprocity has the potential to lay the groundwork for a vulnerable foundation built on trust and rapport.