From ethics to analytics: Aspects of participants' orientations to the presence and relevance of recording devices

In discussions of sociological research based on the recording of interactional occasions, participants' awareness of the presence of recording devices is often deemed to have a detrimental effect on the 'authenticity' or 'naturalness' of the data collected. We propose an alternative approach to this issue by seeking to turn participants' observable orientations to the presence and relevance of recording devices into an analytic topic, and exploring the precise kinds of situated interactional work in which such orientations are involved. Drawing on a substantial data corpus from three distinct research settings, we analyse a range of interactional functions associated with participants' orientations to the fact of their talk being recorded. Instead of assuming that it will act as a constraint on the production of 'natural' talk, we show how the relevance of a recording device is negotiated and used in situ as a participants' matter and interactional resource.