Video Methods: Social Science Research in Motion

This interdisciplinary collection provides a set of innovative and inventive approaches to the use of video as a research method. Building on the development of visual methods across the social sciences, it highlights a range of possibilities for making and working with video data. The collection showcases different video methods, including video diaries, video go-alongs, time-lapse video, mobile devices, multi-angle video recording, video ethnography, and ethnographic documentary. Each method is presented through a case study, showing how it can be used in practice. The authors offer pragmatic advice and discuss practical issues, including equipment, techniques and skills, analysis, and presentation. They also show how video methods can be used in a range of different contexts – at train stations, on bicycles, in schools, outdoors, and in museums – to investigate worlds that are visible, audible, tangible, and in motion. In doing so, they illuminate the theoretical possibilities that video methods offer for researching the body, identity, everyday life, affect, time, and space.

Charlotte Bates gained her Ph.D. in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, with a thesis entitled Vital Bodies: A Visual Sociology of Health and Illness in Everyday Life. Her work has been published in Sociological Research Online and Visual Studies.