Tag: innovative methods

How to craft a video abstract: reflection on making research visible

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

While all social media are now overflooded with posts about (and by) Generative AI, I have been thinking about how to make high-quality social research visible in the era of Large Language Models and all kinds of AI-based chatbots. Another reason for writing this blogpost is to reflect on my own experience of making video abstracts for the journal articles I published after completing my PhD.

If you are doing social sciences, your goal may be not only to get published but also to share your research outputs with other scholars and broader publics beyond academia. There are many ways in which one can make research publications visible and engage with publics, ranging from writing op-eds and blogposts to making visuals and video abstracts.

Video abstract formats

When I published my first PhD-based article on structures of feeling, I wanted to creatively disseminate it to share the results of my research with wider audiences. I decided to make a video abstract. My quick research into the types of video abstracts for journal articles found three of the most engaging formats.

The most popular one is talking videos, where academics talk about their publications to the camera. This is a less time-consuming video to make, which can be easily recorded with a phone or a laptop camera. However, it requires writing a script or carefully thinking about what you will say. You will probably need to make several takes before you are happy with your video. This option may be uncomfortable for those who do not like talking to the camera.

Another format is recorded video slides with the key findings presented on slides, combining text, images and animation. This may be more familiar to academics, as many were presenting online during (and after) the COVID-19 pandemic. These slides can be made with PowerPoint and recorded with Zoom. This format allows choosing whether to show a face or not, and the focus will be on your slides, not your talking head.

Finally, I came across several animated video abstracts without an author’s face, employing visual storytelling about research outputs. I enjoyed whiteboard animations based on publications, which amazingly combined verbal, textual and visual forms in research presentation. It was not obvious how to make them, but it was obvious that their production is time-consuming, even though they stimulate the creativity and curiosity of both researcher and audience.

Further, I will share my experience of crafting animated and talking video abstracts and conclude with reflections on their role in research visibility.

Animated video abstract

I decided to start with an animated video abstract, as I wanted to draw my article in the video. This prompted me to continue my search and learning. After watching animated videos about research, I found an educational course, From Verbal to Visual. From this online course, I learned how to use icons in sketchnoting, concisely visualise ideas with a black marker and use a video-editing software to combine a video of my graphic drawing, my audio explanation and background music.

It took me several days of creative thinking, learning and making until I crafted my first video abstract. I am sure some will view it as a luxury to spend so much time making an animated video abstract, especially under time pressure in academia. (I was crafting mine during the Christmas holidays). But for me, it was more about curiosity and learning how to make it and how to creatively disseminate research. Of course, when I crafted a second animated video abstract for my journal article on everyday inequalities, it was much easier and quicker. However, it still required time and energy for original thinking and crafting.

Despite all these efforts, I find the result amazing, even though it is far from perfect, but unique, like any handmade object. An animated video abstract reflects the idea of research as craft. This strongly resonates with my vision of doing creative ethnography, which my article on avant-garde methodology develops. This new article explains how to conduct multi-sited ethnography, use drawing and analytical assemblage in research, and creatively write with ethnographic data.

Talking video abstract

My experiences of making video abstracts broadened this year, when Sociology, the journal of the British Sociological Association, invited me to make a talking video about my article on everyday inequalities, which won the Sociology SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence 2025. In recent years, more and more academic journals have started suggesting their authors make video abstracts for published articles. In my opinion, Theory, Culture & Society provides really good examples of the talking video format, displayed on their journal website.

As for my experience, recording a talking video abstract for my article published in Sociology journal was split into four stages.

First, making a talking video requires writing and editing an accessible script for a three-minute video. I wrote this script, reread it and tried to tell it. Then I prepared a place and put the minimum equipment I had, a phone with a holder and a laptop camera, in two locations. Later, at the editing stage, I chose to work only with the video recorded with the phone, because it turned out to be better in terms of picture and sound. I decided to use a simple background which would not distract the viewer and put a table lamp on the floor to add cosy light, as it was rainy outside. I made a couple of shoots to check whether my face was in the frame and whether my voice was clearly heard.

At the second stage, ensure that there is no background noise from the window or anywhere else, which will disturb your video recording. Do not forget to put your phone on flight mode. Next, when you are recording a video abstract, it is better to talk about your research article, using a script as a reference and sometimes improvising, rather than reading a script. Natural talking makes a video abstract more engaging. (I know it is hard when you are talking to the camera). I did a couple of takes to choose the best one later.

The third stage includes editing a video abstract with a video-editing app or programme. I used iMovie, but you can use your preferred one, or skip this stage if you do not have time or the skills to use them. But then you need to record an almost perfect video, which does not need to be cut or improved. My talking video appeared to be twice as long as Sociology journal asked for. That is why I cut less important parts to make the video more concise and engaging. I should say that my video-editing skills are very basic. They still allowed me to add my title and name at the beginning and cut less important video frames.

At the final stage, I sent the video abstract and script to the editors of Sociology, who kindly helped me add subtitles. You can find this video abstract on my YouTube channel and it will be available on the Sociology journal website soon.

Is it worth making a video abstract?

Before making a video abstract, one may need to consider carefully whether all the effort and time spent is really worth it. On the one hand, academic journals follow the trend of encouraging authors to make video abstracts. The thing is that online users now consume more video content than textual and visual content. The probability that someone will become interested in your research article increases if they find your video abstract.

On the other hand, I have recently had a chance to discuss this issue with a senior academic who was sceptic about video abstracts and their dissemination on algorithm-based video streaming platforms. According to this position, it is not worth spending time making video abstracts, as they are not supported by algorithms and do not help increase the citation rate. If you are a recognised professor, your publications will be read without creative dissemination. However, early career researchers need to spend time for dissemination if they want their research outputs to rich academic and wider audiences.

It has been two and a half years since I posted a video abstract for my first PhD-based journal article on structures of feeling published behind a paywall. By now, it has reached 850+ views on YouTube, compared with 500+ reads of my blogpost with its summary, 1000+ reads on the journal website, and only eight citations in publications by other academics. This statistic tells us that video abstracts do not directly increase the citation rate, but they increase engagement with your article. For example, I regularly receive emails from people who want to read the article but cannot access it and ask me to share it with them. Some people (most of them students) contact me to say that my article helped them in their research.

As for the article on everyday inequality, also published behind a paywall, its animated video abstract got only 150+ views over the last two years. But the article and my research findings were mentioned in a conversation between three characters in one British film, and it has been cited five times by other academics so far. Again, there is no direct link between a video abstract and scholarly recognition. But what I see from this experience is that my research has become more visible thanks to the video abstracts, which I also posted on my social media accounts.

Are you curious about learning how to craft a video abstract? Are you interested in creative research dissemination? Are you looking for innovative ways of public engagement? If yes, then why not experiment with a video abstract and see what it may bring in terms of making your research visible? At the end of the day, why not give a video abstract a chance among research dissemination channels and public engagement tools?

Seeing between the lines: how drawing opens up new horizons in social research 

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

The recent requests from academic journals to peer-review submissions on drawing as a method and an invitation to give a guest talk on drawing in social research have made me reflect on my experience of using drawing in sensory ethnography and, more broadly, in the social sciences. Looking back at my published research and evaluating my unpublished work in progress have provided me with several insights on applying drawing as a research tool of data collection, which I share below.

I should say that I am not an artist. I am a professional sociologist who is mainly doing ethnography and qualitative research. For these methodological traditions, interviewing and observation in all their variations are the main methods of data collection. But how can we make these classical methods more vivid, imaginative and (multi-)sensory? I suggest that integrating drawing in interviewing and observation in different ways, genres and formats can help with this.

Preparing my slides for the guest talk within the course ‘Research in Pictures’ led by the contemporary artist Victoria Lomasko at Humboldt University, I realised that I tend to use line and graphic drawing in research in two ways.

First, I apply drawing as a creative task for research participants while interviewing them. In this case, a researcher invites interviewees to draw something with a pen, a black liner or felt pens. And then participants are asked to explain their drawings, as this verbal information will be important for further interpretations at the stage of data analysis. As a sociologist, I believe that it does not make sense to ask participants to draw anything without their additional explanations. Otherwise, a researcher would not interpret the drawings correctly. But this is also an issue for the methodological discussion.

A research participant drawing her volunteer experience of cleaning the Black Sea from the fuel oil split. Photo by Alexandrina Vanke ©

Sometimes this leads to the situation when participants draw and talk simultaneously, sharing their emotions, senses, feelings and thoughts about the topic of drawing. Sometimes they draw in silence and then provide a reflection on the drawing made or the topic discussed. Thus, drawing becomes a helpful means for talking in a deeper, emotional way and from another angle about the research topic compared to directly answering questions from the interview guide.

My recent articles on felt-sensed imaginaries of industrial neighbourhoods and on everyday perceptions of inequalities explain how to ask people to draw their neighbourhoods and society in one interview. Throughout my research practice, I learnt that requests for participants to draw something should be short and clear, and relevant to the research questions or themes. Then drawing will enrich an inquiry with visual information, which is different from verbal narratives but extends and supports them.

Second, I experiment with sketching and graphic drawing in ethnographic observation. In social research, observation typically requires writing field notes. There is a rule saying that without field notes it does not make sense to do observation. I am sure some social scholars will disagree with that. They will probably be right because one can make graphic field notes, although they still require inscriptions. But what if we apply sketching as one more way of documenting events, life situations or slow changes in space? Why not combine observational drawings with written field notes or keep them as either additional or substantive visual data, similar to photos but not equal to photos?

My favourite example is the black-and-white drawings from the expedition diary by the artist Wassily Kandinsky, who studied the culture of the people living in the Russian North. Kandinsky’s field notes combine written words and quick sketches of folk architecture, costumes and rituals.

Sketches in the expedition diary by Wassily Kandinsky. Source: https://ourreg.ru/2018/01/29/ja-polozhitelno-vljublen-zyrjan/

To be sincere, I am still struggling with sketching people, and especially moving ones. But sometimes I manage to grasp their motion and movements with curvy lines and fuzzy shapes. Indeed, it is much easier to draw people resting or sitting, for example, in a café or on a bench.

However, the easiest way to start sketching for research purposes is to depict the landscape or an architectural building through simple and familiar shapes, like triangles, squares and rectangles. After that, one can add some eye-catching details to these geometrical objects and connect them with lines. Making a straight horizontal line dividing the field and the sky on a paper sheet does not require specific artistic skills. But this exercise will help to feel a drawing tool and a drawing surface and to connect yourself with the drawn subject.

Graphic drawing of the deindustrialising landscape of Moscow by Alexandrina Vanke ©

I write more about these and other issues, such as how to analyse drawings by participants and make observational drawings and theoretical sketches in my article ‘Multi-sited ethnography: developing avant-garde methodology for creative research into everyday lives’ forthcoming in Sociological Research Online. Stay tuned for more updates!

For learning more examples of using line and graphic drawing in social research, check out the following publications: