CDH Methods | Video Data Analysis for social science and humanities

New

Convenor: Tom Kissock (CDH Methods Fellow)

This Methods Workshop will offer Video Data Analysis for Social Science and Humanities students. It’s a relatively new, broad, and innovative multi-disciplinary methodology that helps students understand how video fits into modern research both inside and outside academia. For example, Cisco has estimated that video will make up 80% of internet traffic and 17.1% of it will be live video which is a 15-fold increase since 2017; therefore, it’s a tool that cannot be overlooked when conducting research.

Tom will address how to use video ethically, for example:

• Informed consent
• Storage
• Privacy

and also practically;

• Building timelines
• Coding schemes
• Presenting research findings

Tom will also plans to include a lesson focussed on viewing livestreams in a reflexive manner as this is a huge topic in the TikTok era

About the convenor: Tom has fifteen years’ experience as a Director, Executive Producer, and Livestream expert for the BBC, YouTube, NBC, and Cisco; coupled with seven years’ experience researching video witnessing and human rights abuses. In 2020 he received his MSc in Globalization and Latin American Development from UCL where his research used Video Data Analysis as a research methodology. He tracked how populist politicians in Brazil built misinformation campaigns by strategically cross-sharing videos to avoid journalistic questioning as a symbolic accountability mechanism during the 2018 presidential elections.

His PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge is a loose extension of his MSc, but explores positive aspects of streaming advocacy, such as how Indigenous video activists in Brazil use live video on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Kwai to reach audiences to discuss climate change, the environment, and land rights. He is interested in how video can produce knowledge and, subsequently how societies value different knowledge through the process of video witnessing. In his spare time, he serves as the Executive Producer of Declarations: Human Rights Podcast (part of Cambridge’s Centre for Governance and Human Rights), has given lectures on live streaming and human rights at MIT, UCL, and the University of Essex, and has written pieces for LatAM Dialogue and the Latin American Bureau.

CDH Methods Workshops are open to staff and graduate students who want to learn and apply digital methods and use digital tools in their research.

Participants are requested to complete this simple information questionnaire before the event.