Video Analysis

In the last few years we have witnessed the widespread proliferation of video camcorders as a powerful and sophisticated instrument for data collection. Video is increasingly used in broad areas of research throughout the social sciences. It allows for a rich recording of social processes and provides a completely new kind of data. Used as a «microscope of interaction», this «video revolution» is expected to exert profound impact on research practice. But despite its popularity as an instrument, the methodological discussion of video is still underdeveloped. This book gathers a selection of outstanding European researchers in the field of qualitative interpretive video analysis. The contributions discuss the crucial features of video data and present different approaches how to handle, interpret, analyse and present video data collected in a wide range of «real world» social fields. The book thereby aims at providing an overview on contemporary interpretive and qualitative approaches to video analysis.

Hubert Knoblauch is Professor of Sociology at the Technical University Berlin. Bernt Schnettler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bayreuth. Both are conducting research on interaction, communicative genres and social forms and have build up laboratories of video analysis.
Jurgen Raab is Professor of Sociology at the University of Magdeburg.
Hans-Georg Soeffner is Professor emeritus at the University of Konstanz and former President of the German Sociological Association. They have developed and applied an original approach to visual data called Sociological Hermeneutics.