A lack of mess? Advice on undertaking video-mediated participant observations

Purpose: This article offers practical advice to ethnographers venturing into doing participant observations through, but not about, videoconferencing applications such as Zoom, for which the methods literature offers little guidance. Design/methodology/approach The article stems from a research project about a BioMedical Design Fellowship. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Fellowship converted all teaching activities to online learning via Zoom, and the participant observations followed along. Taking an autoethnographic approach, the authors present and discuss concrete examples of encountered obstacles produced by the video-mediated format, such as limited access and interactions, technical glitches and changing experiences of embodiment. Findings: Changing embodiment in particular initially led the authors to believe that the “messiness” of ethnography (i.e. misunderstandings, emotions, politics, self-doubts etc.) was lost online. However, over time the authors realized that the mess was still there, albeit in new manifestations, because Zoom shaped the interactions of the people the authors observed, the observations the authors could make and how the authors related to research participants and vice versa. Practical implications: The article succinctly summarizes the key advice offered by the researchers (see Section 5) based on their experiences of converting on-site ethnographic observations into video-mediated observations enabling easy use by other researchers in relation to other projects and contexts. Originality/value The article positions video-mediated observations, via e.g. Zoom, which are distinctly characterised by happening in real time and having an object of study other than the online sphere itself, vis-à-vis other "online ethnography" methods. The article further aims to enable researchers to more rapidly rediscover and re-incite the new manifestations of the messiness of ethnography online, which is key to ensuring high-quality research

Mice over-expressing salmon calcitonin have strongly attenuated osteoarthritic histopathological changes after destabilization of the medial meniscus

SummaryObjectiveCalcitonin is well-known for its inhibitory actions on bone-resorbing osteoclasts and recently potential beneficial effects on cartilage were shown. We investigated effects of salmon calcitonin (sCT) on the articular cartilage and bone, after destabilization of the medial meniscus (DMM) in normal and sCT over-expressing mice.DesignBone phenotype of transgenic (TG) C57Bl/6 mice over-expressing sCT at 6months and 12months was investigated by (1) serum osteocalcin and urinary deoxypyridinoline and (2) dynamic and normal histomorphometry of vertebrae bodies. In subsequent evaluation of cartilage and subchondral bone changes, 44 10-week old TG or wild-type (WT) mice were randomized into four groups and subjected to DMM or sham-operations. After 7weeks animals were sacrificed, and knee joints were isolated for histological analysis.ResultsTrabecular bone volume (BV/TV) increased 150% after 6months and 300% after 12months in sCT-expressing mice when compared to WT controls (P<0.05). Osteoblast number, bone formation rate and osteocalcin measurements were not affected in TG mice over-expressing sCT. In WT animals, a 5-fold increase in the quantitative erosion index was observed after DMM, and the semi-quantitative OARSI score showed over 400% (P<0.001) increase, compared to sham-operated WT mice. DMM-operated TG mice were protected against cartilage erosion and showed a 65% and 64% (P<0.001) reduction, respectively, for the two histopathological evaluation methods.ConclusionssCT over-expressing mice had higher bone volume, and were protected against cartilage erosion. These data suggest that increased levels of sCT may hamper the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis (OA). However more studies are necessary to confirm these preliminary results