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The use of video recordings for the production of knowledge has spread all over society. This paper presents an empirical study of the processes of interpretation of audio-visual recordings. It draws on an example in the context of police work and on the other side investigation of recordings of police violence. With a theoretical background in communicative constructivism special attention is given to situated bodily forms of "making things visible" performed by the participants. Interpretation is not understood as an pure cognitive but rather an communicative process. I elaborate on that by presenting results of (reflexive) videography of practices of video-interpretation. However, the specifics of the work are not only brought upon situatively, but are embedded in an institutional and organizational context. This paper draws on the concept of work arcs, that allow to highlight the trans-situative linkage.

Doppelrezension zu: 1) Kauppert, Michael; Leser, Irene (Hrsg.): Hillarys Hand: zur politischen Ikonographie der Gegenwart. Bielefeld: transcript 2014. Kulturen der Gesellschaft, Bd. 11. ISBN 978-3-8376-2749-7. 2) Przyborski, Aglaja; Haller, Günther (Hrsg.): Das politische Bild: Situation Room: ein Foto - vier Analysen. Leverkusen: B. Budrich 2014. Sozialwissenschaftliche Ikonologie: qualitiative Bild- und Videointerpretation, Bd. 6. ISBN 978-3-8474-0160-5.

Video technology became available in the 1960s and massively diffused into nearly all institutional spheres during the following decades (Zielinski 1986). It is not only used for provision of movies and entertainment (Greenberg 2008), documenting, and recording of events in the semi-professional and private domain (Raab 2008), but also for the analysis of human conduct in psychology and education (Mittenecker 1987) and in sociology (Knoblauch et al. 2006; Knoblauch et al. 2008; Kissmann 2009; Heath, Hindmarsh and Luff 2010). In this paper, I am going to argue that with the availability of video technology a form of discursive practice of interpretive (re)construction of knowledge has been established in a variety of vernacular fields of practice. Based on the available literature and an empirical example taken from a public demonstration of such a vernacular video analysis, I will show some elements of communicative practice that allow for detailed analysis of visual knowledge. Furthermore, I will discuss methodological issues, as to be approached, and which elements can be found that constitute the communicative (re)constructive processes of analysis.

This paper highlights the dynamics in sequences of violence using the perspective of communicative constructivism as a theoretical framework. The main focus of this paper is on the role of third parties in violent sequences. Using the example of two smartphone videos that show different types of violence (a brawl in a less institutionalized setting, execution in a military context), the third parties in these violent encounters are analyzed. Considerations from communicative constructivism are pursued to make a distinction between contextuRal and contextual third parties. The former are physically and performatively involved in the sequences of violence while the latter have consequences for the dynamics of violence due to their semantic and symbolic representation. ContextuRal and contextual thirds are to be understood not as static roles but as "modes of action" that have a different influence on the sequences of violence and can be better comprehended in their specific temporal-sequential embeddedness into the trajectories of violence. Therefore, the analyses emphasize that violence can be understood as communicative action in which those involved within the "triad of violence" refer to each other in their interactions.

The presence of (audio-) visual recordings of violent situations has opened up new perspectives for empirical violence research as well as for theoretical perspectives. Not only
has this mediatization allowed for the public visibility and critical discourse on violent events, but social scientific methods have also moved towards the microscopic study of visible forms of violent events. Violence is a contested term and social researchers in particular wrestle with the question of which methodologies and methods are both appropriate and suitable for studying violence. We discuss how the theoretical development is connected to the visual data and the agenda can only be understood if we are clear about the extent to which social research itself is mediatized. The following chapters elaborate on specific research development that we call "new microscopy." Against this background, we see a central challenge that violence research working with visual data in particular is heading towards. It consists in describing violent situations in an ultra-detailed way and at the same time being
sensitive to at least three problems, which we approximate as underestimated embeddedness, presence bias, and visibility bias. We conclude by outlining what the issue may contribute to this debate.