The Camera Rolls, Article Review Example

The article is founded on the problem that faces social scientists in the modern-day analysis of human social behavior and interaction using third-party videos. While analyzing human social behavior and interaction has been made possible through the use of cameras, the use of cameras poses a number of challenges for such an analysis. The article has based its research on two fundamental questions, (1) how might the presence of a video camera affect the unfolding of interactions that are recorded in third-party videos? And (2) How might the perspective of the videographer influence the production and preservation of these records and, in turn, what influence might this standpoint have on our analysis of the data?

The authors raise these questions to determine the importance of developing systematic approaches to the use of videos that have been created by other individuals as data essential to the analysis of human social behavior and interaction, as well as cultural records. The authors highlights the abundance of third-party video recording that mainly originate from social media, which allows the sharing of videos.

The research’s findings include the conditions that have provided social scientists an unprecedented opportunity to develop sociological records of micro-interactional practices, cultures and organizations. The authors highlight Howard Becker’s questions as pertains the use of data that was originally collected for other uses. The authors conclude that third-party videos offer social scientist a detailed outlook into the workings of social interaction in a manner that can only be realized by an embedded videographer.

Literature Review

There is an existing conceptual framework present within the research. The research has based most of its arguments by defining third-party videos and their use in research by social scientists in the past. The conceptual framework stems from a number studies conducted between 2001 and 2010. The connection between the conceptual framework and the current study by the authors is determined by one factor; all previous research adopted within the conceptual framework acknowledges that all videos employed in research was never intended for social science.

The authors employs an adequate number of sources to base their argument and research. They use a total of seven previous research to provide the foundations for their research. In all of the sources used by the authors, research always analyzed third-party videos in different settings. The author also further employs a number of sources that are argue the theory and concept of using third party videos, the challenges, pitfalls and considerations that have to be taken.

The authors have judiciously selected their citations. The citations come from a research that has been conducted over a considerable amount of time. The oldest in 1967 and the latest in 2011. This depicts the extensive use of ethnography is social science. This provides an unbiased depiction of the topic. The studies that have been cited by the authors have been conducted I a wide variety of social settings. The studies employed videos that captured interaction between different members of family society.

Research Design

The study has a largely vague research design. This is because the research employed secondary data that was collected from other studies conducted. As such, the participants are not adequately described in terms of the population. The population that was used in all the other studies that have been sourced had a wide variety of characteristics that made human social interaction analysis possible. There is no existing inclusion and exclusion criteria employed in the study. This is owing to the nature of the data being collected, i.e. third-party videos. Because third-party videos are taken at the discretion of the videographer, in this case an embedded videographer, the inclusion and exclusion criteria is determined by the videographer.

There is no definitive sample size that is employed in this research. The study relies on third-party video analysis conducted by other previous studies. As such, the sample cannot be definitively defined as a representative of the population. There is no support that the sample size guarantees statistical power. However, this sampling method is justified relative to the study question. In order to ensure an adequate representation of the population, a wide variety of studies will have to be employed. The study question has not had much incursion by social scientist, which may take some time, with the advancement of technology that allows for third-party video recording and storage.

Results

Owing to the nature of the information collected and studied, the important characteristics of the sample have not been defined. The participation, attrition and differential attrition rates cannot be defined for all studies that were employed in the research. The key descriptive statistics for all the variables are designed by the researcher as the problems and potential for a third-party perspective.

The results, that third-party videos can provide social scientists with a unique view of the moment-by-moment working of human social interaction, address the hypothesis under question. The researcher has effectively drawn results by combining the analysis of previous research by Heritage and Clayman (2010), Sidnell (2010) and Schegloff (2006 and 2007). The theoretical foundations highlighted by Heath, Hindmarsh, and Luff (2010) play an important role at arriving at the results.

Discussion

The discussion section formulates the major part of the research. The author effectively discussed the results pertaining to the use of third-party videos in human social interaction analysis. However, they fail to provide the limitation associated with their methodology. The authors have not addresses the issues of sample representativeness. The samples that were employed did not guarantee adequate representation of the whole population. There is also high risk of generalizability of the research as a result of the potentially inadequate representation.

The authors indicate that their research should encourage discussion into the use of third-party videos in human social interaction analysis. However, they fail to indicate the implications of further research into the topic. The researchers offer a rather unbiased outlook into the subject but fail to acknowledge any surprise and/or challenges associated with the research.

Overall Evaluation

The study is generally limited by virtue of the representation of the samples employed by the other research employed. The article has taken into consideration a number of studies initially conducted on the use of third-party videos in analyzing human social behavior and interaction. However, these studies do not take into consideration the adequate representation of the population.

The study is validated by virtue of previous research conducted on the topic have arrived to similar conclusions, that third-party videos offer unique insight into human social interaction. However, it cannot be considered reliable as a result of inadequate population representation. However, I would include this study as a piece of evidence on the importance of third-party videos in human social interaction analysis. This is because it highlights the different view that an embedded videographer offers from the regular institution videographer.

References

Jones, N., & Raymond, G. (2012, July). The Camera Rolls: Using Third-Party Video in Field Research. The Annals of the American Academy, 109-123.