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In this article, we sketch the field of qualitative video-analysis and locate videography within this. Instead of presenting the methods of videography formally, we illustrate the application of this method in a particular field: Marian apparitions occurring in a German town in 1999, captured live on video. The presentation of the method in this paper follows a general methodological structure. (1) We first outline the ethnographic context of the setting in which the video-recordings were made. This context includes actors, religious associations, and locations as well as some aspects of the apparitional events’ historical genesis. (2) We then turn to look at the performance of the Marian vision as recorded in the video. By applying sequential analysis, we roughly identify a temporal order to the event, which exhibits an interesting deviation from earlier forms of apparitions due to the way it takes a subjectively “spiritual” form. This finding leads us to finally (3) address the role of the subjective perspective that, as we argue, is a further essential dimension of videography. It is on this level that we are made aware of the relevance of the life-world as a methodological background for the kind of interpretive social science that takes the actor’s perspective into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentation of the 2010 Midterm Conference of the European Sociological Association Research Network 20 Qualitative Methods "Innovating Qualitative Research: Challenges and Opportunities. New Directions in Religion, Technology, Migration and Beyond," held at the University of Bayreuth (Germany), 20-22 September 2010. The following documentation includes the inaugural addresses and all statements and interventions from the two plenary sessions on "The Future of Qualitative Research" that took place during the mid-term conference in September 2010 at the University of Bayreuth. Speeches and discussions were entirely videotaped, transcribed and carefully edited in order to present a thorough and readable documentation. The text was revised by all intervening speakers and is published upon unanimous approval. We are grateful to Carolin Dix for valuable support with transcribing the video data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual research methods are becoming increasingly important for qualitative studies. Within this dynamically expanding field, methods for analysing ‘natural’ video recordings have developed considerably over the past decades. In this article we discuss methodological aspects of general importance for any analysis of this type of video data. Being a fundamentally interpretive method, our first argument is that sequential analysis is always a hermeneutic endeavour, which requires methodical understanding. The second refers to data collection. We stress that, in addition to sequential analysis, the ethnographic dimension of video analysis should be taken into account methodologically. Video analysis requires, thirdly, a systematic account of the subjectivity, both of the actors analysed as well as of the analysts. Our arguments are grounded in extensive data from several studies, including the communicative genre of powerpoint presentations, commemoration rituals and public events. Selected data fragments are presented here to support our claims. Building upon this expertise, we propose further improvement of video analysis methodology by reflecting on our own practice of analysing video in data sessions (i.e. the ‘video analysis of video analysis’). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers a brief resume of recent developments in the field of interpretative visual analysis with emphasis on the German speaking area and the sociological discipline. It lays a special focus on hermeneutical and genre analysis and on research with audiovisual data. Far from constituting an already closed field, the authors stress the fact that methodological advances in qualitative research based in visual data still face a number of pending quests. This encompasses sequentiality, complexity and naturalness of videographic data, and extends to the respective methodological challenges for transcription, analysis and presentation of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]