Advantages of Video Ethnography
According to Wayne Fife, the goal of ethnographic research is to formulate a pattern of analysis that makes reasonable sense out of human actions within a context of a specific place and time. The use of videos can help ethnographers achieve this goal.
Joseph Schaeffer names four primary ways in which the use of video can be advantageous to ethnographic research:
- Videos allow for coverage of activities in much of their complexity in their natural settings over an extended period of time. This coverage can be used to supplement written accounts and provides a context for the limited coverage by other methods.
- Videos allow for scientific rigour when conducted by trained researchers. Videos retain sequences of observed behaviour for later scrutiny and can as a result increase quality and reliability of statements made regarding the activity.
- Videos allow for review by both researchers and participants which can help increase the scope of interpretation.
- Videos can be used to establish connections between abstractions and inferences and the observed activities on which they are based.
Antonius Robbens proposes that various forms of media, such as the video, are useful because of the difficulty in portraying different senses in writing, that the literary bias in ethnographic research results in a neglect of the senses. As a result, videos can help reveal previously elusive and intangible aspects of social and cultural behaviour and interaction. Videos provide an accurate recording of events while still leaving open a large scope for analytical interpretation. They provide opportunities for collaboration between researchers and participants and can serve as a valuable adjunctive tool in many types of ethnographic studies.
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