Video in Social Science Research

Functions and Forms

Kaye Haw, Mark Hadfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136882357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

In this digital age the use of video in social science research has become commonplace. As sophistication has increased along with usability, as spiralling staff costs push out direct observation, the researchers training today are grasping video as a means of coming to terms with the continued pressure to produce accessible research. However, the 'fit' of technology with research is far from simple.

Ideally placed to offer guidance to developing researchers, this new text draws together the theoretical, methodological and practical issues of effectively using video across the social sciences. This book concentrates on how researchers can benefit from the use of video in their own research, whether it is:

• Video as representation
• Video as an aid to reflection
• Video that generates participation
• Video, voice and articulation, or
• Video that acts as a provocation.

In turn each of these five central functions is discussed in relation to different stages of the research process, consisting of:

• Research design
• Fieldwork and data collection
• Analysis of data and findings
• Dissemination.

As a practical research tool this book shows how, why and when video should be used, representing an invaluable guide for postgraduate and doctoral students conducting research in the social sciences, as well as any researchers, academics or professionals interested in developing technologically informed research.

Chapter 1

Forms and functions

In an age in which visual imagery is challenging the authority of written text in a range of domains, from youth culture to news reporting (Featherstone, 1995; McRobbie, 2000), it has become a type of ‘nexus’, a connection point between researchers that straddles methodologies and disciplines, from the academic to the applied. At this nexus, debates between researchers over visual methodologies tend to fall into a number of distinct camps. Dominant among these are those with a long tradition in visual methods and the use of visual materials, for example ethnographers and anthropologists (MacCannell, 1994; Banks, 1995; Margolis, 1998), and those methodologies where an extensive technology for observing research subjects has developed, for example classroom-based research within education (Noyes, 2004, 2008). These camps are the basis of the traditional distinction between visual research that focuses on ‘subjects’ consumption and appreciation, or ‘participants’ production, of visual forms and research where visual methodologies are controlled by researchers as they study a particular phenomenon. This is a distinction based on who consumes, owns and produces visual images, whose purposes they serve and to whom they have a specific meaning, a distinction summarised by Banks (2007) as ‘on the one hand between the use of images to study society and, on the other, the sociological study of images’ (p. 7).

There is a wide range of visual methodologies, from virtual/visual ethnography to participatory video research, and methods range from mind mapping to ‘phototherapy’. At times, the only apparent connection seems to be the interest of researchers in visual representations and individuals’, or their own, understanding of the ‘reality’ that surrounds them. Implicit in most discussions, and explicit in a few, is a concern with the nature of the connection between seeing and knowing. For naïve and radical empiricists alike, seeing truly is ‘believing’, and the status given to the visual data can lead researchers to adopt various forms of visualism, ‘the view that, among our phenomenal experiences, only visual experiences are evidence’ (Bealer, 1999, p. 248). However, there are others who stress the materiality of the visual form and the contexts, both symbolic and physical, within which it is produced or consumed. Form and context can not only constrain what can be depicted or captured visually, but also give additional meaning to visual products, which act as a ‘representation of a representation’ (Banks, 2001, p. 50). From within this perspective, what is of primary interest is the symbolic meaning of a video or picture created within a social relationship, whereas the ‘literal reality’ captured by its content is only of secondary interest.

In this book, we focus upon one particular stratum of visual methodologies – the mechanical production of moving images or, more specifically, video. Our reasons for focusing on video are threefold.

First, as researchers, we have grown up with the technology, from bulky VHS cameras that had to rest on your shoulder to the new HD digital cameras, no bigger than a mobile phone. Our own use of video has developed over the last fifteen years, from it simply being an additional form of data collection to using it to create critical dialogue between groups involved in community consultations and, more recently, as a means of exploring group self-representation and collective and individual identity.

Second, the sheer fashionability of video, both within and outside the research community, has made it one of the most popular visual methodologies. Video is now as likely to be used by researchers who are interested in it, not for internal, methodological reasons, but for what might be called ‘external’ reasons, to do with its cultural cachet, perceived persuasive power and potential to democratise the research process. Hence its popularity within participatory, emancipatory and social action forms of research, where it is treated as a medium with the capacity to engage a mass or non-specialist audiences with the processes and outcomes of research (Braden, 1999).

Third, video occupies a very paradoxical position within the visual nexus. At one level, its ability to capture moving images with a high degree of naturalism, and to allow for these images to be examined with far greater intensity than would be possible by direct observation, gives it an aura of hyperrealism. Video has the potential to capture behaviours and interactions in situations where direct human observation would be too intrusive, and in ways and forms, from slow motion to multiple perspectives, that provide additional and novel forms of data. At another level, we live in an era in which the media, the third culture (Featherstone, 1995), are dominated by video formats, from the 2 GB uploads of the so-called YouTube generation to the Hollywood blockbusters that can be watched via our mobile phones and game consoles. Video is therefore strongly encamped in differing parts of the nexus. In those with a strong visual methods tradition, it often becomes entangled with much broader theoretical debates around visual forms of knowing and representation, whereas, in others, it is ensnared in the specific technical challenges of collecting and analysing observational data. Video has even spawned its own partial methodological solution to this paradoxical status, in the work of participative and collaborative projects in which participants and researchers review and analyse existing video materials, as well as produce new materials.

Video is well established within key aspects of a range of different research processes. Possibly the most widespread use of video has been as a form of ‘indirect’ observation, allowing for detailed coding of individual and group behaviours, and as a means of prompting reflection by participants on their decision-making and actions. In applied and evaluative research, it has found favour as a way of assessing the fidelity of implementation of new interventions. As a form of disseminating research findings, especially for practitioners, it has now become ubiquitous in many disciplines. Recent developments within new digital technologies have created new means of video-based interaction and dissemination, from web-based distribution to video-conferencing. This, in combination with the wider availability of commercial-quality equipment and software, has allowed researchers to work differently together in teams, with participants and prospective users of their research, and to create new forms of virtual networks and spaces for enhanced analysis, dialogue and dissemination. The use of video has grown in popularity, not only because of the increased availability of new technology and the relative increase in cost of direct observation, but also because of the cultural cachet associated with it as a medium.

The very plasticity of video as a research tool and its presence across fragmented fields of research means that individuals have different concerns at the forefront of their minds when they discuss its use. This diversity was apparent in the findings of our current Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project aimed at promoting critical dialogue concerning the methodological issues arising from working with young people, voice and video within participatory research. Their concerns could be grouped into three broad categories: first, integrating theoretical strands concerned with video and participation; second, the issue of developing a theoretical and contextual background for video analysis; and third, issues to do with the notion of voice. We too have long held concerns about the problematic notion of voice in relation to the type of voice being articulated, who and what is heard, what is listened to and how it is heard (see Hadfield and Haw, 2000b, 2001; Haw, 2006c). It is these concerns about the types and power of different voices that have positioned the developing body of our work in relation to video and young people.

As it stands, we believe that researchers in this area, in common with others, are having predominantly two types of conversation, the ones about the technical and creative aspects of using video in research, and those that are about their own positioning within the research. However, our research is directed by the belief that there is a third level of conversation to be had, and this is one that focuses on the degree of integration of video within the research process, which, when combined with questions about the type of research being undertaken, becomes linked to the relationships between the researchers and participants. Our contention is that the dialogue around the first two conversations is existent and rich, if bounded by particular disciplines, but the critical dialogue between these and the third conversation is under-developed and under-theorised.

The purpose of this book is to alert expert and novice researchers using video to the importance of being part of this critical dialogue, and our contribution is to come at it from a perspective based on our particular interpretation of the concept of modes and modalities. The concept of multimodality is borrowed from linguistics (see Iedema, 2003; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Linguists are careful to make the distinction between modes and media. Modes are:

The abstract, non-material resources of meaning making (obvious ones include writing, speech and images; less obvious ones include gesture, facial expression, texture, size and shape, even colour). Media, on the other hand, are the specific material forms in which modes are realized, including tools and materials.

(Dicks et al., 2006, referencing Kress and
Van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 22)

We take the view that modes are abstract meaning-making resources, and so, for our purposes, modalities are the abstract purposes for which video is used, rather than video as a medium, process, tool or product. Others have also found the concept of multimodality useful when discussing visual methodologies. Rose, for example, suggests that there are three modalities that can contribute to a critical understanding of visual images, the technological, compositional and social (Rose, 2008). Our point here is that the concept of modality is used in different ways, reflecting the particular background and discipline of the users, and that we, in our approach to exploring the forms and functions of video, are using it in our own pragmatic way.

Positioning our own work

The rise of the media society in which young people draw on ‘third cultures’ (Featherstone, 1995), mass-medial cultures, as part of their social construction of identity has been well documented (see McRobbie, 2000) as a social and cultural phenomenon within youth culture. The increased use of video across the social sciences is well documented (Prosser, 1992, 1998; Banks, 1995, 2001; Niesyto et al., 2001; Pink, 2001; Voithofer, 2005; Rose, 2008). It is also considered to be a powerful dissemination medium for a range of projects concerned with young people. For these reasons, there has been a massive expansion in the use of video with young people by a range of professionals and campaign organisations trying to ensure that their voice is heard within local decision-making. The National Youth Agency and British Film Institute (Harvey et al., 2005) estimated in 2005 that there were 17,000 young people being given video training, with thousands more involved in video projects with no training. Video production has become a popular approach, as it is seen as a means of increasing the participation of young people within civic life and education, particularly those deemed alienated or disaffected (Johnson, 2001; Tolman et al., 2001; Kincade and Macy, 2003). The overlapping of global cultures with specific local and social cultures has been discussed by researchers involved in media or critical literacy studies (see Niesyto et al., 2001); their findings, however, have been difficult for non-specialist researchers to apply systematically to their own research.

Young people are frequently used as an example of how individuals have become increasingly sophisticated in their media consumption and the increasing role it plays in their self-construction, and this affects their reaction to video within research. For example, within participatory projects, researchers need to provide a complex mix of technical, creative and critical support to move people from consumers to producers of media. The impact of these forms of support and how they interact with the experiences of participants as media consumers sets up methodological issues that range from questions of ownership to the authenticity of any video products.

Our own work with video has been developed over previous research projects working with marginalised groups and communities on a range of sensitive issues. These studies have ranged from issues around racism, through issues of exclusion from school and perceptions of full-body search procedures in prisons, to the most recent participatory research. In each research project, video was used slightly differently, depending on the objectives of the research and the types of participants or audiences it aimed to engage in the work, but each of these pieces of research had a common aim (see Hadfield and Haw, 1997b, 2001, 2003; Haw et al., 1999; Haw, 2002, 2006b): that was, to legitimate a range of voices through creating a series of spaces for critical dialogue and action. We have used video as a professional development and community consultation tool, and as a means to explore group self-representation, and collective and individual identity (Melucci 1989, 1996). This way of working with video is not unique within the UK context (see Gauntlett, 2007, and the associated website: www.theory.org.uk). What we do have is a broad range of experience in using video in a great many pieces of research. We briefly describe the following projects because each presented different methodological challenges and we refer back to them throughout the book to highlight how we have learnt to deal with them.

IPSUP

Our first extensive use of video was on a European funded project, IPSUP, an acronym for International Projects on Schools and Urban Policy. It was in this project that we first came across the work of Dirk Schouten and his ideas about emancipatory action research linked to professional development activities. We acted as second-order action researchers (Elliott, 1991), supporting the work of a group of practitioners. These practitioners were enrolled in a Masters programme that looked at the development and implementation of public policies within urban contexts. It was run jointly between a university in England and another in the Netherlands. The programme had a strong comparative element, based around joint visits and a number of satellite link-ups. During these link-ups, a series of video case studies, created by the course participants in both universities, were used to look at how, in different countries and cities, policy issues were constructed and services developed responses to them. The MA programme was designed to attract senior managers and leaders from a range of services, both public and voluntary. The cohorts of students in each university were supported by small teams of researchers and video consultants who assisted them in making their video case studies. The videos produced as part of the IPSUP project ranged along the continuum, from relatively straightforward accounts of a policy issue, to highly personal, reflective accounts of the response of an individual to a new policy discourse. From this, we learned a great deal about the potential of the video production process to prompt reflection and to generate data.

Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) evaluation

Our next study using video was an evaluation aiming to assess the impact of a massive amount of European funding to regenerate four socio-economically deprived areas of Nottingham. The objective of this evaluation was to match the concerns of policy developers with those of local people and maintain the engagement of local people throughout the process. To do this, the team adopted a way of working with video that we described as ‘real-time’ ethnography. The research was carried out within the same time span of the local policy development cycle or life span of the funding framework from which most post-16 educational provision was funded. This gave the process its ‘real-time’ element, in that the spaces created for voices to be heard were timed so that they could influence the political and policy processes. The evaluation used a...

Table of contents

• Frontcover
• Video in Science Research
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of tables
• Introduction
• 1 Forms and functions
• 2 Video used in extractive mode
• 3 Using video in a reflective mode
• 4 Video as projection and provocation
• 5 Video that generates participation
• 6 Video, voice and articulation
• 7 Video and your research: function and forms
• 8 Video and your research: from methodology to methods
• References
• Index