ABSTRACT
Since the development of third-generation (3G) mobile networks, service providers have made mobile videophony services available. This marks a ‘mobility turn’ in videophony, which was initially developed with the ‘Picturephone’ for home and office (Lipartito 2003) where video communication relies on fixed cameras (orientable to the speakers) rather than handheld devices which can easily be oriented any time and in any direction with one hand. In contrast to traditional ‘fixed’ videophony, this ‘mobility turn’ requires ‘mobile methods’ of inquiry (Büscher and Urry 2009). This chapter aims to fill a gap in mobility studies by describing methods that can be used to record and analyse actual mobile video calls. Mobile video calls appear as a new and emergent practice that allows participants a greater sense of virtual mobility, virtual co-presence or ‘being there’ when communicating with others (Gaver 1992). Figures show that in most European countries about 3 per cent of mobile-phone users make mobile video calls. But this situation might change, as mobile video telephony has become part of a significant push from the industry to develop the use of mobile multimedia services. Apart from marketing studies or studies oriented towards the interest of mobile video calls for particular types of user, such as those with impaired hearing (Cavender et al. 2006; Richter 2007), there has been little research on the uses of private mobile video calls. An exception is a recent study based on interviews and diaries which showed that 50 per cent of calls were for ‘small talk’ (i.e. social and emotional calls), 28 per cent to show something and talk about it and 22 per cent to achieve a particular goal such as coordination or practical arrangements (O’Hara et al. 2006). Mobile video calls are also a particularly interesting mode of interaction in which the continuous production of images by both participants is woven into the fabric of the interaction: since it is straightforward to orient the camera in any direction, frames are produced and inspected for their potential communicative intent, leading to particular problems in the management of visual contexts on the move (Licoppe and Morel 2009). Understanding this requires the development of new methods to capture the audio and screen activity of the mobile phones, and gain some degree of access to the overall context of mobile users. We discuss here two complementary ways of doing that, with mobile
video-glasses (which give access to part of the visual context but do not always allow a good visual access to the mobile phone screen) and direct audio and video capture (which gives very good access to mobile-phone screens but leaves out the context of the user on the move). The ability to record naturally occurring encounters has proved extremely fruitful to the study of mediated interactions. The possibility of repeatedly watching video recordings and transcribing them affords access to the sequential organization of complex multimodal coordination, and to the way participants’ verbal and non-verbal behaviours are made accountable as a continuous practical accomplishment (Goodwin 1981; Heath and Luff 1992). We show here how to do such audio and video recordings with mobile users. Beyond the study of mobile video telephony, our methods of observations can be used in fine-grained ethnographic studies of any kind of mobile multimedia services.
