The (Re)Construction of Human Conduct: “Vernacular Video Analysis”

Video technology became available in the 1960s and massively diffused into nearly all institutional spheres during the following decades (Zielinski 1986). It is not only used for provision of movies and entertainment (Greenberg 2008), documenting, and recording of events in the semi-professional and private domain (Raab 2008), but also for the analysis of human conduct in psychology and education (Mittenecker 1987) and in sociology (Knoblauch et al. 2006; Knoblauch et al. 2008; Kissmann 2009; Heath, Hindmarsh and Luff 2010). In this paper, I am going to argue that with the availability of video technology a form of discursive practice of interpretive (re)construction of knowledge has been established in a variety of vernacular fields of practice. Based on the available literature and an empirical example taken from a public demonstration of such a vernacular video analysis, I will show some elements of communicative practice that allow for detailed analysis of visual knowledge. Furthermore, I will discuss methodological issues, as to be approached, and which elements can be found that constitute the communicative (re)constructive processes of analysis.