Abstract

This chapter focuses on emerging tools to support qualitative researchers engaged in the analysis of digital video. There are two elements of existing research practice in this field that are emphasised. Firstly, these researchers routinely use the opportunities afforded by digital video to share, discuss and debate developing analyses of action and interaction. Indeed these affordances are equally beneficial when sharing video and findings between researchers and clients, supervisors and students, and so forth. Secondly, this kind of research increasingly involves partners from geographically dispersed institutions working together on the analysis of common datasets. As a result, there are growing demands to provide support for distributed research teams to collaborate on the (real time) analysis of digital video materials. The chapter considers the possibilities for eResearch tools to provide support for the analysis of video data amongst distributed research teams. It also introduces some of the practical, legal and ethical constraints and challenges of developing Internet-based technologies to support the distributed and collaborative analysis of video data.