First Person Perspective Digital Ethnography

Lead Research Organisation: London School of Economics and Political Science
Department Name: Social Psychology

Abstract

Much of social research tries to understand the perspective of others. Researchers try to understand the reasons guiding peoples' actions, their situated thoughts, what they are influenced by in the social environment, how people respond to things, and why people respond differently. What if social researchers could objectively view the given behaviour from the inside? If they could then use that objective account to interview participants and explore their situated thoughts? In short, what if they could actually step into the perspective of others?

The proposed seminar series will spearhead the use of new mobile digital technologies to obtain first person perspective audio-visual recordings of situated human behaviour. Using mobile miniature high-definition cameras researchers have begun to 'step into' the visual, auditory, temporal and activity perspective of participants. For example, the SenseCam (Hodges et al., 2006), developed by Microsoft, in Cambridge UK, is a camera worn around the neck, it uses a fish-eye lens to take photographs of the users' visual environment at either set intervals or in response to changes in that environment. The SubCam (Lahlou, 1999), another device, uses a miniature audio-video recorder attached to glasses to record activity sequences from the perspective of the actor. These and other devices, such as mobile eye tracking systems, are going to become powerful new research tools providing unprecedented access into the perspective of actors as they behave in diverse 'real-world' contexts, such as, policing, industry, and health.

The pioneering use of these new mobile first-person perspective recording technologies have revealed five issues which need to be addressed: (1) What are the real-world contexts in which these technologies might be most useful? (2) What novel academic questions are raised by these new technologies? (3) How can this rich multi-media data be analysed? (4) What Code of Ethics should guide the collections, storage and presentation of this data? And finally (5) how should future technological developments incorporate applied, academic, methodological and ethical concerns?

The proposed series of five seminars will address each of these issues in turn. Academics at various stages in their careers will join with technology developers, and potential beneficiaries in industry, policing and health to discuss key presentations on each of the five issues. Each seminar will produce an output which attempts to answer each of the above questions. The presentations and outputs will be made available to the wider research community through a clearly structured website which will act as a resource for first person perspective digital ethnography. Moreover, the investigators, in partnership with the LSE and industry partners will make first person perspective recording technology and software suitable for the analysis of such data freely available to interested researchers in academia and beyond.

Planned Impact

There will be two groups of non-academic beneficiaries: technology developers and applied researchers.

1) TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPERS
Who: Technology developers (such as Microsoft, Reveal Media, and VideoVest) have been working on mobile point of view data recording for several years. Minaturisation, incorporation of eye-tracking, HD quality, and integration with additional sensors is being pursued by a range of companies (i.e., Tobii, Vicon, Contour and ASL Eye-Tracking)

What: The issue facing developers is: How should future recording technology be designed to most benefit applied and academic research communities? The seminars will help technology developers to better address applied, theoretical, methodological and ethical issues in their future development of FPP research technologies.

How: UK based technology developers from Microsoft, Reveal Media, VideoVest, and Vicon will be invited to participate in the seminar series, and they will have a Seminar dedicated to their interest of developing a technology specification sheet to guide for future developments. This Seminar will occur at the end in order to incorporate applied, theoretical, methodological and ethical issues.

2) APPLIED RESEARCHERS IN INDUSTRY, HEALTH, POLICING AND MARKETING
Who: First Person Perspective data collection already has a user base. For example, it is already being used in the fields of industry (i.e., Danone and EDF), health, policing and marketing. Also, first person perspective photography has been recognized as a powerful rehabilitative memory aid by many clinicians (see, Browne et al., 2011).

What: Despite increasing use, there remains uncertainty about: what data collection technologies are most suitable? What literature exists on using these methods? How can this complex data be analyzed? What ethical guidelines should be followed when gathering, storing and presenting first person perspective data? The unique mix of stakeholders involved in the seminars will be able to advance these questions.

How: Applied researchers will benefit in four ways: (1) Representatives from the Police (Neil McGuinness-Smith), industry (Salvator Di Benedetto), marketing (Tony Lewis) and rehabilitation services (Brian O'Neill) will participate in the seminar series. Specifically, the first Seminar will be dedicated to addressing their experiences of gathering first person perspective data. (2) The website will act as a resource, building a network of researchers, making available presentations, a bibliography, a code of ethics, and suggestions for data analysis. (3) SubCam technology and DIVER software licenses will be made freely available to applied and academic researchers. (4) Future technological developments, informed by the specification sheet, will feed into the future potentials of first person perspective data collection and be advertised through the website.

Publications

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Cornish, F. Power and Ethics in Research with New Mobile Digital Recording Technologies in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science

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Lahlou S (2015) Subjective evidence based ethnography: method and applications. in Integrative psychological & behavioral science

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Ochs E (2015) Corporeal reflexivity and autism. in Integrative psychological & behavioral science

 
Description The Seminar Series has findings in five domains, each corresponding to one of the seminars. Below is a summary of the findings, with more detail available on the project website.



1) CURRENT AND POTENTIAL USES

First Person Perspective Digital Ethnography (FPPDE) is currently being used in industry, policing, health, teaching, marketing and academic contexts. It is being used not only to record events, but also to stimulate reflexive practice. To date only a tiny subset of potential uses is being exploited, mainly because the field has been held back by limitations in technology and analysis.



2) DISCOVERING NEW QUESTIONS

First person perspective digital ethnography introduces exciting new theoretical and applied research questions. Specific questions which arise include: How do observer accounts of behaviour compare to actor recordings of behaviour? In group activities, to what extent are the accounts of multiple actors congruent? How can the method best be used to stimulate self-reflection? How can multiple steams of data, from humans moving between contexts, be integrated? Does viewing one's own first person perspective recordings lead to behaviour change?



3) ANALYSING FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE DATA

New methods of digital data capture create new problems for analysing data. Traditional software for analysing qualitative data (NVivo, Atlas/ti, MiMeG, Transana, QDA Miner, Dedoose, Qualrus, MAXQDA, and Digital Replay System) is of limited use for FPPDE. Software which can handle video and transcription (i.e., NVivo and Atlas/ti) can be used for simple analysis. DIVER can also be used where the analysis team is geographically distributed. However, it gets more difficult when the data set comprises, for example, hundreds of thousands of images (SenseCam/Memoto), or, video data combined with a transcript of what occurred in situ and a transcript which comments on the activity (i.e., two transcripts) and, potentially, biosensing data. No widely available software is adequately able to deal with these issues. However, prototype software is being developed, and will become available in the coming years.



4) ETHICAL ISSUES

Tapping into the first person perspective of actors in their lived social environments, and the recording of these perspectives, raises ethical issues that must be addressed by the adopters of digital ethnographic methods. A systematic framework is needed, and, to this end, it is advised the researchers use the framework proposed by Kelly, P., Marshall, S.J., Badland, H., Kerr, J., Oliver, M., Doherty, A.R., & Foster, C. (2013). An ethical framework for automated, wearable cameras in health behavior research. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 44(3), 314-319.



5) THE FUTURE OF FPPDE

With massive hardware and software projects, such as Google Glass, and the popular momentum behind lifelogging, the future will include not only a lot of technological developments but also a mainstreaming of FPPDE technologies and methods. Currently first person perspective digital recording has focused on images, videos and sound. In the future it is likely that biosensing will provide increasingly important additional data streams that will need to be linked to the video stream. As the technologies become ubiquitous, and the usage more widespread and common place, there will be a time in the not too distant future when social science researchers will potentially have access to an individual's entire life history as a first person perspective data stream, a massive data set which could be bequeathed to social science, and which would provide a massive resource for longitudinal research.
Exploitation Route Recording and analyzing what people do in real world contexts, outside of the laboratory, is crucial for many non-academic domains. The seminar series had presenters and participants from many non-academic contexts, including policing, heavy industry, software development, hardware development, interactive art, marketing, healthcare, television broadcasting and education. These presenters and participants obtained benefits in networking, access to the latest knowledge, discussion of the ethical issues, and hands-on trials with cutting edge technology. The findings will have benefits for researchers in social science, and people working in industry, policing, health, teaching and marketing contexts.



We will reach these targeted audiences through the following outputs:

- Open access website resource

- Media coverage in The Economist

- Journal Special Issue entitled 'Digital Ethnography of Subjective Expeirence' (in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science)
Sectors Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Education

Electronics

Security and Diplomacy

Other

URL http://psych.lse.ac.uk/digital_ethnography/findings.html
 
Description NARRATIVE IMPACT The ESRC seminar series 'First Person Perspective Digital Ethnography' has had a demonstrable impact on research and society. DIRECT IMPACT OF THE SEMINARS The seminars were very well attended, with more participants wanting to attend than we could accommodate. Overall we had 20 high profile speakers, and an audience of 35-40 for each of the seminars. Including practitioners from the BBC, Research Ethics, industry, technology, and artists. The Economist magazine attended one event, writing a piece on it, and conducting two video interviews: Link: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/psychology-first-person-video Link: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/cathal-gurrin-life-logger JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE We are in the final stages of publishing a special issue of the journal Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences which will feature seven articles from across the seminar series. These articles will be Green Open Access, and thus available not only to academics, but also to practitioners. WEBSITE RESOURCE We have produced a website that contains videos of the seminars, our agreed findings, links to relevant research, and contact information. This website has received nearly three thousand visitors to-date, with an average amount of time spent on the website at 2.06 minutes. This is a very high amount of time spent on the website, indicating, that people are actively using the website as a resource. Link: http://psych.lse.ac.uk/digital_ethnography/resources.html NEW TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION FOR THE SUBCAM On the basis of the seminar series a new technical specification for the SubCam V.2 was developed, this has been manufactured in China, and we are currently preparing these new SubCams for use in ongoing research projects (including projects with links established through the seminar series). THREE RESEARCH PROJECTS INITIATED WITH POTENTIAL FOR SOCIETAL IMPACT New links were created, and this led to three ongoing research projects, for which pilots studies have already been made (and one presented at a conference). 1) Decision-Making in the Operating room. This is a study in the DIMS Simulator, with clearance from the Danish Ethics agency (and LSE Ethics) Pilot study summer 2014 with 2 pairs anaesthetist + nurse in two scenarios each. A larger field study will follow this pilot. 2) Medication dispensing in Danish hospitals. Pilot study done summer 2014 with 3 nurses in Herlev hospital and in Hvidovre hospital in the Copenhagen area. This is a study in real hospital setting, with clearance from the Danish Ethics agency (and LSE Ethics) 3) Training Norwegian Police Cadets. This is a research with the Politihøgskolen/Norwegian Police University College, and we have done already one pilot and one large data collection (46 pairs of policemen for 2 interventions each). The data are collected in the course of the realistic training of the cadets (with professional comedians playing victims or perpetrators, in natural setting).
First Year Of Impact 2014
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Societal

Economic

Policy & public services

 
Description Risky decision-making: Opening the human black box to document decision-making
Amount £170,400 (GBP)
Funding ID EC Grant Agreement No: 330709 
Organisation European Commission 
Sector Public
Country European Union (EU)
Start 01/2014 
End 01/2016
 
Title SubCam V.2 
Description Through the course of the Seminars we developed a new set of technical specifications for the SubCam V.2. This enables the high resolution recording of audio and video from a first person prespective point of view. An early production run of 30 of these devices has been constructed in China, and we are currently preparing the devises for use in the UK and abroad. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2014 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Providing and servicing this research methodology has established contacts in Norway, Denmark, UK, and France. 
 
Description Decision making in the operating room 
Organisation Danish Institute for Medical Simulation (DIMS)
Country Denmark 
Sector Hospitals 
PI Contribution This is a study in the DIMS Simulator, with clearance from the Danish Ethics agency (and LSE Ethics) Pilot study summer 2014 with 2 pairs anaesthetist + nurse in two scenarios each. A larger field study will follow this pilot.
Collaborator Contribution Provide access to the simulations
Impact Published at BSAS conference 2014 (Nov 20-21, Imperial College, London) "Decision-Making in the operating room studied with subjective evidence-based ethnography. A pilot." S. Lahlou (LSE); Peter Dieckmann (Danish Institute for Medical Simulation); Tom Reader (LSE).
Start Year 2014
 
Description Medication dispensing in Danish Hospitals 
Organisation Herlev Hospital
Country Denmark 
Sector Hospitals 
PI Contribution Pilot study done summer 2014 with 3 nurses in Herlev hospital and in Hvidovre hospital in the Copenhagen area. This is a study in real hospital setting, with clearance from the Danish Ethics agency (and LSE Ethics)
Collaborator Contribution Provided access and local expertise
Impact none yet
Start Year 2014
 
Description Research with the Norwegian Police Force 
Organisation Norwegian Police
Country Norway 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution Ongoing research project
Collaborator Contribution Access to participants and research site.
Impact Data collection ongoing, future reserach articles likely.
Start Year 2013
 
Description First Person Perspective Digital Ethnography (five one-day seminars) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Series of five seminars, with a wide range of international speakers, and an international audinece including many practitioners and people from industry.

New research project with the Norwegian Police Force
New research project with hospitals in Denmark
New Fellowship grant awarded
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://psych.lse.ac.uk/digital_ethnography/index.html
 
Description Interview for The Economist: A Search Engine for the Self 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The Economist magazine interviews Dr Cathal Gurrin about his presentation in the seminar series. A video of the interview is available online:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/cathal-gurrin-life-logger The Economist came to one of our seminars and interviewed some presenters, including Dr. Cathal Gurrin. A video recording of the interview is hosted on the Economist website, at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/cathal-gurrin-life-logger

The Economist came to one of our seminars and interviewed some presenters, including Dr. Cathal Gurrin. A video recording of the interview is hosted on the Economist website, at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/cathal-gurrin-life-logger
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/cathal-gurrin-life-logger
 
Description Interview for The Economist: The Psychology of First Person Video: Not Like Cinema 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The Economist magazine interviews Professor Saadi Lahlou, Co-Investigator on the grant, about his presentation in the seminar series. A video of the interview is available online:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/psychology-first-person-video The Economist magazine came to one of our seminars because they were interested in the topic. During the course of the day they interviewed Professor Saadi Lahlou, Co-Investigator on the grant, about first person perspective digital ethnography. The interview is available as a video on the Economist website: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/psychology-first-person-video

The Economist magazine came to one of our seminars because they were interested in the topic. During the course of the day they interviewed Professor Saadi Lahlou, Co-Investigator on the grant, about first person perspective digital ethnography. The inter
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/psychology-first-person-video