ABSTRACT
Qualitative researchers make recordings, typically interviews but also soundscapes, video recordings of organizational behavior, and creative, complex recordings of other sounds and sights within particular places. Photography and video recording have become common elements in ethnography and other embodied methods. Further, researchers utilizing participatory approaches may invite participants to construct their own digital recordings as data. From a critical material perspective, recordings are not transparent windows that display the reality of “what happened” but interpretations of reality. Recording is a situated social practice that constitutes the very data it purports to capture. Researchers make active decisions about what to record, when and how long to record it, from what angle(s), whether to use video, audio, or still photography, and so on. In addition to reflexive consideration of their role in producing recordings, researchers can also engage in creative techniques to make multiple forms of meaningful recorded data.
