The Video Production of Space: How Different Recording Practices Matter

This article examines how video recording practices excert an influence on the ways in which an organizational phenomenon—in our case organizational space—becomes available for analysis and understanding. Building on a performative and praxeological approach, we argue that the practical and material ways of conducting video-based research have a performative effect on the object of inquiry and do not simply record it. Focusing in particular on configurations of camera angle and movement—forming what we call the Panoramic View, the American-Objective View, the Roving Point-of-View, and the Infra-Subjective View—we find that these apparatuses privilege different spatial understandings both by orienting our gaze toward different analytical elements and qualifying these elements in different ways. Our findings advance the methodological reflections on video-based research by emphasizing that while video has a number of general affordances, the research practices with which we use it matter and have an impact both on the analytical process and the researcher’s findings.