Video Ethnography - Important Issues

Important Issues

Although there are many benefits to video ethnography, there are also important issues that arise from the use of videos. For instance, there are numerous ethical issues regarding the privacy of research participants or subjects. Schaeffer addresses the issues of voluntary consent and confidentiality of data. Voluntary consent is the control of involvement in the research lying firmly with the participant who needs complete knowledge of the research and its goals to exercise this control properly. There must also be mutual trust and respect between the researchers and the participants. Confidentiality implies the proper use of the gathered data as to maintain the highest degree of confidentiality possible while also maintaining the integrity of the research.
Schaeffer provides three requirements to prevent the misuse of ethnographic videos:

1. Having only trained professionals handle the videos during the research.
2. To be aware of the needs of the participants, the social, political and economic relevance of the data.
3. The willingness to sacrifice the use of videos unless indispensable for the collection of information.

Other issues can relate to the practical appropriateness of videos in specific projects. This takes into consideration both the project design and the field situation (i.e. the physical environment). Schaeffer concludes that videos can be useful and reliable in a variety of settings when they are properly maintained and handled.

In addition to issues relating to the creation and preservation of the video recording, its contents should be considered. To evaluate the objectivity of the research, questions of bias must be addressed. In theory, the ethnographer acts as a passive participant and captures data relating to the participants. For the format of video ethnography, it should be determined whether it is the ethnographer's perspective expressed in the video or that of the participant(s). By determining perspective, questions of why the particular event was recorded, how the participants were shown, and how this medium relates to the ethnographer's research can be answered. These issues relating to perspective have been prevalent in anthropology, and, as a result, theories of addressing bias are embedded in ethnographic discourse. Kenneth Pike considered bias of perspective and formulated the theory of Etic and emic. This concept has been further discussed and operationalized in the works of anthropologists, Marvin Harris, and Ward Goodenough.