Dissonant by Design: Examining Dual-Lens Video in Qualitative Research

• In Event: Reanimating Relationships Between Movement, Meaning, and the Image: Shifting Understandings About Video Data in Qualitative Research

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
As cameras have become more ubiquitous, qualitative researchers across the humanities and social sciences have sought new ways to generate videos that trace participants’ movement and experiences (Pink et al., 2017). Increasingly, many scholars have used first-person perspective videos (such as those generated using GoPros or other wearable cameras) in attempts to understand the situatedness of participants’ lived experiences, including more-than-human encounters (Harwood et al., 2019). Yet, as with other cameras, what appears on screen is “treated as a direct representation or reflection of ‘reality’ in any straightforward sense” and much remains in the background (Brown et al., 2008, p. 2). Thus, in this paper, the author draws on the work of MacDougall (2006) to examine what can be lifted from the background of video when “different modes of looking with a camera” are used in tandem (p. 4).

Methods and Modes of inquiry
For this paper, the author used data generated in an ethnographic case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) and zoomed in on data generated by one boy in an elementary classroom during a whole-class literacy task. In the yearlong study, the author examined how children used diverse communicative modes within a classroom makerspace and generated data in numerous ways, including interviews and observations. During this retelling period, the focal child—a third-grade self-identified Black boy—was asked by the researcher to wear a GoPro camera so that his patterns of movement within and across a classroom makerspace could be traced. While he happily obliged the researcher’s request, he also used a handheld digital camera to create a ‘selfie’-esque video that seemingly resembled adult-produced videos posted on Instagram and Facebook Live.

Pairing the two videos—one generated at the request of the researcher and the other generated at the will of a child participant, the author used multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2011)—a derivative from mediated discourse analysis (Scollon, 2001)—for analysis. After sequencing the two videos, the author considered the modal complexity of the videos as evidenced by the interaction of the cameras, the child, and the environment. Specifically, the researcher tended to how each camera provided “corporeal images” of “the body behind the camera and its relations with the world” (MacDougall, 2005, p.3). The author paid particular attention to the dissonance between their intended viewpoint (e.g., the GoPro) and the alternative perspective the child presented (e.g., the handheld camera).

Findings & Significance
This paper refutes what is traditionally seen in video data and instead takes up the body/bodies behind the camera. The author highlights how, by creating his video, the child inadvertently expanded the frame of the researcher’s camera lens by adding his own and he made visible blindspots that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. In so doing, the author challenges how qualitative researchers “go about the daily practice of seeing” (MacDougall, 2005, p.1) and offers alternative methods for scholars to learn to look more attentively at what blindspots may exist within their own video data.

Author

• Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto