Browsing by Author "Holder, Alexander"

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    Doing the organization’s work - Transcription for all practical governmental purposes
    (Frontiers, 2021-12-31) Holder, Alexander; Elsey, Christopher; Kolanoski, Martina; Brooker, Phillip; Mair, Michael
    By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. One the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of the working activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these organizations. These organizations have been chosen as transcription forms a routine part of how they operate as worksites. Further, the everyday working environments in both organizations involve complex technological systems, as well as multiple-party interactions in which speakers are frequently spatially and visually separated. In order to explicate these practices, the article draws on the transcription methods employed in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis research as a comparative resource. In these approaches audio-video data is transcribed in a fine-grained manner that captures temporal aspects of talk, as well as how speech is delivered. Using these approaches to transcription as an analytical device enables us to investigate when and why transcripts are produced by the US military and NASA in the specific ways that they are, as well as what exactly is being re-presented in the transcripts and thus what was treated as worth transcribing in the interactions they are intended to serve as documents of. By analysing these transcription practices it becomes clear that these organizations create huge amounts of audio-video ‘data’ about their routine activities. One major difference between them is that the US military selectively transcribe this data (usually for the purposes of investigating incidents in which civilians might have been injured), whereas NASA’s ‘transcription machinery’ aims to capture as much of their mission-related interactions as is organizationally possible (i.e., within the physical limits and capacities of their radio communications systems). As such the paper adds to our understanding of transcription practices and how this is related to the internal working, accounting and transparency practices within different kinds of organization. The article also examines how the original transcripts have been used by researchers (and others) outside of the organizations themselves for alternative purposes.
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    Investigating the Use of Force in Contemporary Conflict: Researching Military Operations with Audio, Video and Transcript Data
    (National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), 2021-11) Holder, Alexander; Elsey, Christopher; Kolanoski, Martina; Mair, Michael; Elsey, Christopher
    Using public domain video and/or audio-recordings, transcripts, internal reports and inquiries as data, we investigate specific and often highly controversial incidents in which Western militaries employ the use of force. Analysing the interactional organisation of such incidents as they unfold ‘ethnographically’ (incorporating fieldnotes, interviews, biographical accounts and other relevant resources), our collaborative research examines the assessment of threats, the identification of combatants and the distinction between lawful and unlawful military action as interrelated and co-established features of that work. Of interest to social researchers but also military personnel, lawyers and campaigners, among others, this case study will outline how we methodically investigate the use of force with reference to a particular case, the Uruzgan incident, using available interactional data and related resources while remaining alive to their very real limits.
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    Unprofessional vision? Politics, (video)evidence and accountability after the work of Michael Lynch
    (Cantonal and University Library Fribourg, 2025-01-14) Elsey, Christopher; Holder, Alexander; Kolanoski, Martina; Mair, Michael; Allen, Olive
    As part of an ongoing critical dialogue with Charles Goodwin’s work on “professional vision” (1994), Michael Lynch has observed on a number of occasions that ‘viral’ videos—often those depicting instances of police and military misconduct—are publicly circulated artifacts that “vulgarise” and thus render perspicuous issues of ‘evidence’, ‘expertise’, ‘accountability’, and ‘visibility’ as matters of practical rather than philosophical concern (Lynch 1993, 146; see Lynch 1999, 2014, 2018, 2002; Lindwall and Lynch 2021). Alongside the video of Rodney King’s beating and, more recently, the murder of George Floyd, one such video to have gained particular global notoriety is WikiLeaks’ 2010 “Collateral Murder”, which presented leaked gun camera footage from a 2007 US Army Apache helicopter combat patrol in a Baghdad suburb in the course of which, among others, two journalists were killed, two children shot and seriously wounded, and a building in a residential area destroyed with missiles. As with the King and Floyd cases, Collateral Murder, in the form of WikiLeaks’ edited version of the video, was watched in revulsion by millions as a transparent example of egregious wrongdoing—the killing, wounding, and harming of innocents. In this contribution we revisit the unedited footage, extending consideration to its less examined second half in which the Apache team attacks and destroys a building, where we are among the first to do so in any detailed manner. We do that to explore Lynch’s ethnomethodological insights into politics, evidence and accountability as they are rendered—or fail to be rendered—perspicuous by this case. Rather than seeking to establish our own form of ‘professional vision’ as a competitor to the Apache crews’, we suggest that Lynch’s work, if taken seriously, asks us to embrace its ‘vulgar’ counterpart by working through whatwe can make of the video by drawing on our vernacular competencies as ordinary members and the problems we encounter in doing so. We will tease out what might be at stake ethnomethodologically—not an ‘unprofessional’ but practical understanding—with reference to the ‘raw’ Collateral Murder footage and what, as video, it does and does not make available to the viewer. We end by reflecting on “ethnomethodology’s program” (Garfinkel 2002) in light of the issues this strand in Lynch’s work raises, more specifically the care we need to exhibit when we seek to gain instruction in worldly practices and their equally worldly evaluation.