The way we communicate in our professional and personal lives has changed dramatically in recent years. We can now Skype our banks, receive texts from our doctor, and our politicians use Twitter to try to win over voters. For social researchers such digital communication technologies present many new and exciting opportunities for recruiting participants, carrying out fieldwork and publicising research findings. In this podcast Dr Susie Weller from the University of Southampton discusses her NCRM funded Methodological Innovation Project The potential of video telephony in qualitative longitudinal research: A participatory and interactionist approach to assessing remoteness and rapport