Posthuman Visual Methods in Multispecies Ethnographies: 360-degree Cameras as Field Companions and Human-Technological Enhancements

Abstract

This article examines 360-degree cameras as tools that advance posthuman methods utilized during multispecies ethnographic fieldwork. In Finnish Lapland, we recorded immersive footage with a 360-degree camera during 19 go-along interviews with humans, and observations of their Siberian and Alaskan huskies working in sled dog tourism contexts. We conceptualize the 360-degree camera as a field companion and a human-technological enhancement that can decenter the ethnographer’s gaze and, in so doing, better represent multispecies realities. This technological asset can facilitate holistic and embodied forms of ethnographic observation, enabling inclusive, reflexive and relational ways of understanding interspecies dynamics.

Introduction

As scholarly interest in human relationships with individuals of other species (hereafter “animals”) has grown, so, too, has consideration of the methods used to understand those relationships (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017; Huopalainen et al., 2025; Tallberg & Hamilton, 2014). Seeking to understand animals as more than simple adjuncts to human social life, researchers have argued persuasively for methodological innovation that decenters the human (e.g., Jenkins et al., 2021). Key to this has been the emergence of human-animal or multispecies ethnography (sometimes abbreviated as MSE) (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017). Multispecies ethnography represents an attempt to not simply “add” animals to research but place them on a more level footing with human subjects in research (as much as we can). This challenges traditional anthropocentric methodological and epistemological paradigms to open possibilities to see the world more relationally by asking novel questions. A posthumanist ethnography - which attempts to more actively recognize and include animals (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017) challenges ethnographers’ reliance on text and language to make sense of and represent multispecies worlds through, for example, the traditional, stationary interview setting. This article speaks to posthumanism that understands “multispecies” to include animals and flora, as well as a vein of posthumanism concerned with robotics, artificial intelligence, and technologies that enhance human capabilities (e.g., Bostrom & Sandberg, 2009; Braidotti, 2019; Ferrando, 2020; Tallberg, 2025). Together, these strands emphasize the value of decentering human epistemic privilege by engaging technologies that redistribute perception and sensorial presence in the field.

Research in the social sciences has already shown the utility of visual methods (e.g. Bates, 2015; Knoblauch, 2012) with technologies encouraging new experimentation (Rose, 2012). Visual methods have been used extensively to explain social intimacies (Bates, 2015), mobilities and space usage (Simpson, 2015) and relations between humans and animals (Brown & Banks, 2015). Inspired by the possibilities of visual methods to challenge anthropocentrism (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017), this article argues that camera technologies can be utilized to fulfil several posthumanist aims. We suggest that decentering human accounts through visual techniques yields a richer means of telling relational stories (Braidotti, 2019) to gain and present deeper insights into the field and the multispecies’ realities within it (Fijn, 2012; Äijälä, 2021; Äijälä et al., 2025). In previous anthropocentric ethnographies, consumer-grade 360-degree cameras which often utilize two lenses that each capture around 180-degrees to produce a full spherical view around, above, and below the camera (e.g., Cinnamon & Gaffney, 2022), have been introduced as powerful tools for immersive documentation since the 2010s (Tojo et al., 2021; e.g. in Jackson & Lee, 2024) or what Cinnamon et al. (2025) refer to as “immersive holism”. For some multispecies ethnographers, 360-degree cameras have been suggested as “the way of the future” (Fijn, 2012, p. 73).

This article examines the use of 360-degree cameras as a tool that supports advancements of a posthumanist perspective in multispecies ethnographies. We contend that these cameras can act as both technological field companions of ethnographers and human-technological enhancements through accounts of using a 360-degree camera either stationary (as a technological field companion) or mounted on humans (as a human-technological enhancement). This is based on fieldwork conducted as part of a multispecies ethnography involving humans and sled dogs (Siberian and Alaskan huskies) working in the tourism industry in Finnish Lapland. In particular, we focus on 360-degree camera use during mobile interview methods, namely go-along interviews. This approach can be briefly presented as an interview and participant observation hybrid conducted during every-day activities of participants, allowing ethnographers to observe and embody participants’ practices within certain environments while simultaneously being informed of participants’ experiences and interpretations of these routines in situ (Bartlett et al., 2023; Kusenbach, 2003). This method is akin to a multispecies interview method referred to as “walking and talking, knowing and showing” which supports explorations of interspecies dynamics and realities (Adams et al., 2023, p. 116).

This methodological article is specifically concerned with the use of 360-degree cameras to collect multispecies ethnographic data alongside go-along interviews. In so doing, we demonstrate how these cameras, as technological field companions and human-technological enhancements, can expand ethnographic perception, contributing to multispecies ethnography literature by showing the value of technology within posthuman multispecies research methods in the social sciences, and thereby extending the utilization of the 360-degree visual method from anthropocentric (e.g. Gómez Cruz, 2017; Tojo et al., 2021) to multispecies ethnographies.

Literature Review

The Rise of Multispecies Ethnography

Ethnographers undertaking a multispecies ethnography are studying “contact zones where lines separating nature from culture have broken down, where encounters between Homo sapiens and other beings generate mutual ecologies and coproduced niches” (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010, p. 546). By building on evolving posthuman and feminist discourse, it moves away from dualistic categorizations such as human/animal, nature/culture, male/female to point out how they construct and reinforce harmful hierarchies of worthiness (Mullin, 2002, p. 390). They highlight how interdependencies are constructed and maintained.

Posthumanism is a philosophical movement which looks beyond humans to incorporate multi- and interspecies considerations (Braidotti, 2019; Ferrando, 2020; Tallberg, 2025). Within this theoretical framework, multispecies ethnography is used with the aim to understand human encounters with the “material”, initially aligning with Kohn’s (2007, p. 4) “anthropology of life” which acknowledged multispecies realities and the impact of our “entanglements” within these. Yet, as a relatively new vein of ethnography, it is not yet clear what makes a “good” multispecies ethnography and how this ought to be conducted practically in the field. Despite that lack of consensus, the overarching aim of the multispecies ethnography is to understand human relationships with the nonhuman world, such as animals and, crucially, expose the ways in which species are embroiled in the production of power and oppressions. This move beyond the human marks an “animal turn” (Hartigan, 2021, p. 847) or “species turn” whereby ethnographers increasingly “appreciate the foolishness of human exceptionalism” to recognize that “becoming is always becoming with” (Haraway, 2008, p. 244). To adopt a multispecies ethnographic approach is to embrace the idea that humans do not exist in isolation but exist and “become with” in multispecies contexts, and livelihoods “shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces” (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010, p. 545).

There has been an increased appreciation for the critical importance of adopting such perspectives within ethnographic work in a widening range of contexts. Animal-based tourism acts as one example: Dashper (2019) utilised multispecies ethnographic approaches to research trail horses, while both Wadham and Dashper (2025) did so in their study concerning horses working in forestry and trekking to better center interspecies relations while working. In Finnish Lapland, Äijälä (2019, p. 46) acknowledged the importance of multispecies ethnographies in researching the training and housing of working sled dogs, referring to these as “multispecies affairs.” However, enthusiasm and curiosity about multispecies ethnographies have somewhat overridden the need to address the dilemmas and limitations in this methodological approach (Swanson, 2017). These include the significant variations that exist in the extent to which ethnographic approaches are truly multispecies in nature as opposed to “humans plus other species” (Coulter, 2018, p. 60), which ultimately returns to disguised anthropocentrism. Indeed, ethnographies have traditionally utilized methods concerned with human participant observation and linguistic forms of data collection through inter-human discourse. The over-reliance on traditional interviews, for example, remains central to many multispecies ethnographies (Taylor & Hamilton, 2014). However, multispecies ethnographers can utilize interdisciplinary methods, including emerging technology, to gain more data from multiple perspectives (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017). There is a need for methodological experimentation to develop more reliable and representational multispecies methods that help decenter the researcher’s perspective.

A further limitation and ethical vulnerability is that animals do not consent and cannot comprehend the concept of research or what implications participating could have on them or their species (e.g. Coulter, 2018). Others (e.g., Mancini, 2017), point out that guardians can mediate consent on behalf of animals, but this does not fully alleviate challenges: not all guardians can interpret or act on behalf of their interests, wellbeing, and wishes. Considering consent is significant when choosing methods within the evolving nature of research ethics.

Ethnographers do not need to leave existing social science methods behind. Rather, there needs to be “an amplification of the range of our attention” to strengthen understandings of animals in the field (Swanson, 2017, p. 96). To do so, ethnographers conducting multispecies ethnographies increasingly adopt visual methods, ethograms (Hartigan, 2021), art (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017; Taylor & Hamilton, 2014), and object interviews incorporating animals (Thorpe et al., 2024).

Ethnographers are also increasingly choosing to walk with participants as an embodied way of shaping discussion and understanding landscapes and lives lived within them (e.g., Wessels, 2026). Indeed, “go-along” (Kusenbach, 2003) and “walking and talking, knowing and showing” (Adams et al., 2023) interviews are steadily gaining interest as ethnographic methods. In go-along interviews, ethnographers accompany individuals on “‘natural’ outings” i.e., those they would “go on anyway”, resulting in routes chosen by participants (Kusenbach, 2003, p. 463). Ethnographers can gain rich understandings of experiences, existing practices and interspecies dynamics, and how individuals interact and move through familiar social, cultural, organizational, multispecies, and physical environments. Indeed, going on walks with participants generates more embodied, “place-specific” data as opposed to sedentary interviews, due to the role that landscape and space have on shaping interview discussions (e.g., Evans & Jones, 2011). Doing so engages directly with the perhaps overlooked aspects of the everyday lives of participants, particularly those participant Others (e.g., Pink et al., 2010). As this relates to multispecies participants, Pietrowiak (2024, p. 67) utilized the go-along method in their research with guide dogs to deepen understandings of interspecies “cooperation, communication, and rapport”.

Utilizing handheld video recordings as part of a go-along method, Brown (2015) investigated “proper” conduct during dog walks, allowing for improved understandings of how dog-human partnerships are built and sustained. Also adopting an empirical case study involving walking interviews involving animals, Adams et al. (2023) highlighted the benefit of combining “walking and talking” with “knowing and showing” in multispecies fieldwork of sheep and humans, allowing interspecies encounters to spark conversation and reflection. In this methodological article, the aim is to build upon and extend these methods by incorporating the use of 360-degree cameras to develop posthuman visual methods further, through proposing that these cameras can act as technological field companions and human-technological enhancements.

Visual Methods and 360-degree Cameras

Despite the current “era of video” (Rokka, 2022, p. 7) in ethnographic fieldwork, some ethnographers are resistant toward adopting new, tech-driven methods which seem “a far cry from the early days of the scribe among the tribe” (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017, p. 75). Others have questioned the impact that a camera’s presence can have on those it is directed at, giving the researcher an “observational authority”, even running the risk of acting as a “shield” that can result in ethnographers disengaging from the field (Gregory, 2020, p. 7). Yet, as Beuving and de Vries (2015, p. 122) argue, “the image is older than the written word” and provides a unique means to access cultural meanings in naturalistic fashion. Video methods allow ethnographers to engage with individuals across species “as beings-in-the-world” (Fijn, 2012, p. 87). In part, this is because video methods allow for the study of “senses, bodies, and materiality” which are crucial to understanding multi-species worlds (Grosjean & Matte, 2021). Indeed, Pink (2007) argues that video methods are a valuable way to participate in the negotiation of social relationships to produce ethnographic knowledge. There are ethical considerations with visual methodologies relating to anonymization (Wiles et al., 2012) and representation (Pink, 2007), and we share some further challenges with using 360-degree cameras that we faced in this research at a later point. Yet, video offers a richness and aesthetic quality of the resulting output (Vannini & Vannini, 2016).

While 360-degree cameras have not been accessible to many in the past, there is a growing acceptance of video-based methods and improved accessibility of such equipment (Pagett, 2023). Concepts such as Google Street View (Gómez Cruz, 2017) or panoramic photos taken with smartphones allow for the ability to consolidate a collection of images to take the form of a 3D navigational model. However, each image within a panorama is taken at different times and then stitched together to form one long image. Instead, a 360-degree camera can capture an entire scene from multiple lenses simultaneously stitching images together to “put together place and time” (Gómez Cruz, 2017, p. 29). These cameras produce “one ‘equirectangular’ frame or ‘cube map’” to create a “visual representation of the totality of a scene” creating an image that is “frameless”, without the “subjective contour” of the person filming’s decision concerning what or who to frame (McIlvenny, 2020, p. 802 emphasis in original). ¹ Further, 360-degree footage can be analysed through virtual reality (VR) headsets for a stronger immersive experience (e.g., Pehkonen et al., 2026). Yet, this does not eliminate the reality that a) the viewer of 360-degree footage can nevertheless decide which view they wish to watch the 360-degree video from by panning left, right, up, and down, and b) that the ethnographer still dictates where the camera is positioned and for how long it films. In this way, framing and the power dynamics that shape it are not absent in the use of 360-degree cameras. Nevertheless, their use offers a powerful new lens for ethnographic inquiry, as nothing in the camera’s field of vision remains excluded from data, thereby supporting a removal of framing in the traditional, 2D sense.

Both visual and written ethnographic methods involve selective choices on behalf of the ethnographer. Power dynamics need navigation when utilizing visual methods, for example, regarding what or who is recorded, when, from which angle, and how often (e.g., concerning multispecies participants: Haanpää et al., 2021; concerning photographic data: Mountain et al., 2020; Crang, 2009). It is generally the ethnographer who directs the camera toward what holds their attention in that moment, as well as what or who - they believe - is most important to capture. For example, in work by Haanpää et al. (2021, p. 13), it was the humans providing and experiencing tourism activities in Finnish Lapland who held their attention during fieldwork and who they felt were important to capture; the representation of sled dogs and reindeer during a videography was “not intentional”, but rather a “direct consequence” of the animal-based tourism context being studied.

Despite the use of visual methods, animals can become “objects in the image”, rather than “equal partners”, despite intentions to represent and understand them (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017, p. 101). Using 360-degree cameras could support a balancing of power dynamics between ethnographers and participants (Gómez Cruz, 2017). However, the act of analyzing and interpreting video ethnographic data remains a social and cultural practice (Meier zu Verl & Tuma, 2021) that, in a multispecies context, is embroiled in various speciesist power dynamics and assumptions.

Particularly in spatially constrained environments, 360-degree cameras can capture far more than conventional devices (Pagett, 2023). For example, in a confined laboratory environment the use of a 360-degree camera provided a more “complete and unobstructed view” of researchers’ equipment use and work (Ardisara & Fung, 2018, p. 1884). A fixed 360-degree camera position – e.g., mounted above or below human eye-level or stationed in a small, restricted space - can support an ethnographer’s ability to observe the field from multiple perspectives to appreciate views that they would not normally be able to, which enriches their own non-technological senses. Analyzing footage with these “initially disorientating perspectives” can encourage ethnographers to expand perceptual boundaries and attune to alternative “worlds” and viewpoints (Pagett, 2023, p. 4).

Further, 360-degree cameras support a better balance between the ethnographer’s presence and documentation as the camera records a more comprehensive visual field. For example, Haanpää et al. (2021) utilized two digital single-lens reflex cameras, at times mounted on a tripod or supported by a handheld stabilizer. They wrote that while filming during fieldwork concerned with interspecies relations in Finnish Lapland’s tourism context, focus and attention also had to be directed toward filming: finding the right angle, lighting, and timing. Comparably, in ethnographic fieldwork documenting natural dyeing practices, Pagett (2023) needed to film various dyeing processes (e.g., but not limited to, foraging, growing and picking plants, preparing a dye pot) in multiple environments (e.g., home, garden, and allotment). Pagett (2023, p. 5) used a GoPro Max 360° camera after having to interrupt practices to repeatedly reposition traditional cameras’ framings, resulting in becoming “distracted”. Similarly, Tojo et al. (2021) conducted a focus group consisting of seven ethnographers and interviews with five additional ethnographers to understand their experiences utilizing 360-degree cameras. They identified that using a 360-degree camera can allow ethnographers to focus more on engaging with participants and writing fieldnotes on subjective impressions, emotions, sensory experiences, and delegating continuous visual documentation to the camera.

Using technology that requires less attention to the process of filming can be significant for multispecies projects because ethnographers can focus on different elements of a scene rather than on directing a camera, resulting in everything filmed becoming more “equally relevant” and, together, forming “a sensory note” of the fieldwork (Gómez Cruz, 2017, p. 35). Data can then be “embodied” to explore the context in much more detail and accuracy than with data collected solely through framed videos and photographs or reflective notes. Such data are still of central importance, but, as we argue later, 360-degree footage acts as an additional form of data, a technological field companion, and enhancement tool.

Simultaneously, such data cannot be taken as evidence of universal or even straightforward truths (Brown & Banks, 2015) of - what are in fact - complex, layered, multispecies realities. Rather, video methods “shine” in areas where purely acoustic or written forms of data “have struggled” because they aid in “animating the vitality, movement, energies, and fluidities” of multispecies realities and interactions, and allow ethnographers to move “beyond the verbal into realms where bodily and multi-sensory grammars prevail” (Brown & Banks, 2015, p. 113).

Research Design

Between May 2024 and April 2025, 19 go-along interviews were conducted in Finnish Lapland with individuals who work with or have adopted retired Siberian and Alaskan huskies working in the tourism industry. This gathered 23 hours of 360-degree video recordings using an Insta360 Ace 360-degree camera. The visual data complements field notes, 19 interviews, audio recordings, as well as photographs and videos recorded periodically with an iPhone. The use of video was discussed with participants during the consent process and reconfirmed via email prior to each meeting. However, decisions around who would wear the camera - ethnographer or participant - were negotiated on the day. While it was preferable that participants wore the mounted cameras, this decision was based firstly on the participant’s comfort level in wearing such equipment. Secondly, some participants declined to wear the camera mounted on their chest because they were concerned that they and/or their dogs might scratch or otherwise damage the lens.

A 360-degree camera’s position remains fixed: it does not need to move to capture what is below, above, to the side of, or behind it. However, the positioning of the camera needs to be considered as part of the research design (Tojo et al., 2021). This was discussed with human participants (i.e. where to mount the camera, what angle to tilt it, and who wears it). Therefore, research design details of the 360-degree camera were co-designed. Further, the impact of this on the multispecies actors in the field was also discussed. For example, when participants remained stationary but were carrying out chores and engaging more extensively with dogs (e.g., see Images 5 and 6), participants and the ethnographer determined that the camera would be more safe from dogs when bending over them or using equipment, and effective at capturing a more comprehensive shot of the environment and engagements. Were the camera mounted on an individual in such contexts, there would be a higher risk of covering its view of others, as the wearer of the camera turned, bent over, walked away, and returned, for example.

The camera can be (de-)activated directly or using the Insta360 app (Image 1). This interface allowed the ethnographer to assess camera positioning and show human participants what they were agreeing to have recorded. Hence, better consensual understanding in research participation is clearly a strength of this method.

Image 1.

Insta360 app’s interface

Video footage was stored on the first author’s university’s secure OneDrive. While, at times, different perspectives of a fieldsite were appreciated by the ethnographer during fieldwork via the Insta360 app’s interface (Image 1), footage was primarily analyzed on their laptop using the Insta360 desktop app. Audio recordings of go-along interviews (recorded via the 360-degree camera as well as on the ethnographer’s work phone as a back-up) were transcribed initially with Cockatoo software and edited by the ethnographer for any errors or gaps resulting from background noise. For the purposes of this article, 360-degree footage supplemented the six-stage thematic analysis of these interview transcripts (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The ethnographer spent significant time, particularly during the first three stages of thematic analysis, seeking out footage that aligned with significant, coded segments of interviews. In these first three stages, all transcripts were firstly read to form a larger picture of the data collected. Second, repeating or significant patterns in the data were identified and coded. Third, initial candidate themes were generated based on these codes. The ethnographer watched footage from an interview alongside reading or coding it. This methodological article places a focus on sharing our findings concerning how the 360-degree camera played a role during this process as a technological field companion. However, broader themes resulting from thematic analysis that stretch beyond the scope of this article are concerned with human-animal relations, including: sled dogs as employees or tools; sled dog housing, health, and social lives, and; and the impact of tourism operators and promoters on human dog welfare and well-being.

The 360-degree footage collected during fieldwork concerning work processes, individual dog and human expressions or responses to certain stimuli, and interactions, were also more broadly observed anew in more detail or for the first time if the ethnographer’s attention had been directed elsewhere while in the field. At times, this was initiated by references documented in the transcripts, made by participants, about a certain aspect of a chore/kennel layout. Other times, footage was revisited to understand which sled dog a participant was referring to, to observe this dog in more detail in light of analyzing the transcript. Footage was also revisited, once final themes were generated, to identify and take stills that best represented each theme and allowed visuals of the dogs and their working and living environments. Further aspects of how this footage was analyzed or how it impacted participants and the ethnographer are presented in what follows.

Our fieldwork follows the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) ethical research practice guidelines and obtained two different university research ethical approvals (one for dogs and another for human participants) as there are no local multispecies ethical committees. We felt it important to have one for dogs, despite not being obligated for social science research – an aspect we feel has serious research ethics limitations for multispecies research. Throughout, human and dog participants remain anonymous for confidentiality.

The Mounted Camera as a Human-Technological Enhancement

The 360-degree camera was mounted on a human’s body (the ethnographer or participant) via a harness designed for this purpose. The harness was made of an elastic material, had a plastic plate with bendable attachment for the camera to slot into which could be moved up or down to capture a vertical and horizontal field of view. When mounted on the harness, ethnographers must carefully consider the camera’s adjustable angle relative to the body. If one lens is positioned too close to the body, it may obstruct the camera’s field of view. Conversely, positioning the camera at a 90-degree angle, pointing away from the body, allows for optimal footage capture. Careful consideration is required to determine whether a mounted or stationary setup will most effectively record what both the ethnographer and participant want. If wanting to record the perspective of the participant, the mounted camera will be able to document everything in their field of view, even when positioned close to their body. It is this more “intimate” positioning of the camera that is a strength while mounted; it offers a perspective into their positioning with the environment and engagement with others that could not be accessed otherwise. However, if the aim is to document everything that all participants see, a mounted or handheld (e.g. camera stick) option may be best.

In our fieldwork, human participants were presented with the camera and harness, explained its use, before being asked whether they would be open to wearing it during the mobile interview. If the participant expressed uncertainty about how to wear the harness, the ethnographers would first put it on themselves to demonstrate. The ethnographers would never put it on the participant but rather handed it to them so they could put it on themselves. If any adjustments were needed or if the camera needed to be checked, the ethnographers would always ask for permission before approaching and touching the equipment while worn by the participant.

Further, sled dogs were allowed to sniff the equipment to familiarize themselves with its use. Addressing this interest hopefully allowed them to feel more comfortable around it during the interview. It may not be clear to some why this step would be necessary. However, one participant’s toddler – who was not a participant, but present while their parent put on the harness - began crying at the sight of their parent wearing the camera and harness: this can act as a human example that it can be distressing to witness someone you are familiar with “suddenly” having an unfamiliar “appendage”. While mostly restricted by human language, multispecies ethnographers need to recognize animal participants potentially having a desire for transparency about research methods too, such as familiarity with the ethnographer and equipment through smell, observation, and touch rather than the verbal explanations for humans.

Participants wearing the camera rather than the ethnographer removed - or at least mitigated - the ethnographer’s power concerning what or who was filmed. This meant that it was not only the participants who were in front of the camera with the ethnographer behind it, but rather everyone was in front of it and no one behind. The ethnographer regularly reflected on this element of power in controlling what and who was being filmed when utilizing the 360-camera. At times, something that the ethnographer found interesting was happening behind the participant, which the camera could not record while mounted on their chest. We started asking: Is the 360-camera actually very different from traditional cameras in that it only records what those who wear it themselves can see? Why do we manipulate what it records: how and when do we do so?

A unique contribution of a mounted 360-degree camera is providing more holistic documentation and different perspectives that might otherwise remain inaccessible. For example, the first author was crouched in front of the human and dog depicted in Image 2. Her memories and initial notes are based on the perspective she developed from that perspective. Upon viewing the footage, she was transported to “perch on the participants’ chest” via the camera and almost felt “part of the hug” between the human and sled dog (Image 3). This more proximate and intimate positioning allowed her to gain a new perspective of the situation, both in terms of location, and what she was able to see.

Image 2.

Camera mounted on the participant’s chest

Image 3.

Anonymized upward perspective of footage

In Image 3, the small movements of the dog’s and participant’s face are viewable in much more detail (blurred here for anonymity). Research concerned with incorporating multispecies realities could document, notice, replay, and reflect on footage that shows tensions (or lack thereof) in facial muscles, nose twitches, breathing between individuals, and further minor expressions often unnoticed (and undocumented) in the fieldwork. The ethnographer can feel closer, more part of the experience shared between the dog and human: gaining an additional perspective.

In this way, the camera acted as an enhancing device for human capabilities of recording a setting while interacting in it. The ethnographer and participant engaged minimally with the camera. This allowed them to direct their attention to their interspecies interactions and experiences. Creating an “appendage” from the wearer’s chest, it acted as a technological enhancement that could expand the human abilities of the wearer. However, the camera was not solely a human enhancement: we propose that it also worked as a technological field companion separate from humans, which we introduce in the following section.

The Stationary Camera as a Technological Field Companion

There were instances when mounting the camera on a human, as a technological enhancement, was not the best option. In one case, the first author was carrying out a go-along interview while the kennel guides went about their chores on a day when they were weighing puppies. There were many different factors of interest in the field which would have gone undocumented if the camera was mounted on the human participant’s chest as their body would have been blocking what was happening behind them. The ethnographer and participant decided to position the camera in a place that allowed a full 360-degree view of the entire environment, not restricted to the view of the participant. The motivation was to document the various sled dog participants in the kennel, being weighed, and moving around outside of the kennel prior to being weighed. Stationary cameras (as opposed to the aforementioned mounted approach) resemble the more common use of 360-degree cameras in ethnographic work (see Jackson & Lee, 2024). Utilized in this way, the camera became a technological companion to the ethnographer: capturing that which humans are unable to, regardless of the human’s presence or management of the camera angle – to a greater extent than a more traditional, 2D camera.

The first author and participant found a place on the kennel’s fence where the camera could document everyone without interfering with chores or irritating the dogs (Image 4). Here, instead of the harness, a bendable gimbal “octopus” with “legs” that can be bent and wrapped around objects to mount cameras in unique locations was used. A traditional tripod could have been used, but in this type of multispecies fieldwork, a tripod could (more easily) be knocked over by a dog or be “in the way” during chores. With the camera securely mounted on the fence, the ethnographer could crouch next to the kennel’s social media photographer, engage with and observe the puppies who were waiting to be weighed, ask questions, and thus more fully be engaged in the environment.

Image 4.

Camera and battery-addressed later-mounted on a kennel wall

The participant hung a bag from a scale on the same kennel wall the camera was mounted to and placed each puppy inside to weigh them (Image 5). Following this, their weight was noted, their picture was taken by the photographer present, and the puppy was returned to their mother inside the kennel. Positioning the camera diagonally above the bag allowed for an optimal view of the weighing process to record the opening of the bag, which would have otherwise been blocked from view. The ethnographer, standing diagonally behind the human participant and at eye-level with the bag, was unable to see inside the bag or the puppy curled inside it while being weighed. Footage from the camera, however, documented a top-down visual perspective more comparable (albeit not identical) to that of the puppy being placed into the bag and kept the puppy in view for much longer. The positioning of the camera also meant that the puppies and mother inside the kennel could be documented, as well as the puppies outside the kennel who were whining and pacing at the base, anxious to return to their mother (Image 6).

Image 5.

Nursing mother within and a puppy being weighed in an orange bag outside a kennel

Image 6.

Puppies diagonally under the camera prior to weighing

Findings

Multispecies Responses to Posthuman Enhancements in the Field

Participants had good questions concerning what type of camera was being used and what footage it could record. However, there were no negative responses or declines in its use. This is mirrored by Jackson and Lee (2024, p. 16), who note that 360-degree cameras were “well-received” by their participants. Prior to wearing the camera, participants were shown what a 360-camera records by presenting the aforementioned app’s interface. The hope in showing participants what the camera recorded via the app (see Image 1) was to raise familiarity, transparency, and comfort with the equipment.

Further, participants learned that our research project was experimenting with developing research methods that better documented multispecies contexts. It was also explained that those researchers not present in the field could later “join the field” remotely through the footage, which helped participants not feel actively “observed” or “documented” (Tojo et al., 2021, p. 119) in line with posthuman efforts to redistribute the human gaze and reduce extractive surveillance.

The dogs seemed unbothered by the camera both as a technological enhancement and field companion. Some sniffed or tried to lick it when the human wearing it crouched down next to or bent over them. Still, they were not restricted or irritated by its use (as not mounted on them). Participants who knew the dogs well also commented on their positive or neutral responses:

Participant: [speaking to sled dog in a higher octave]: Why are you so calm today? […] You're so well behaved today. […] Are you behaving for the camera? […] Are you?

First author: She knows she’s being filmed [laughs].

Participant: Yeah. Good that you do. I should wear this more often (Interview 6).

This humorous example suggests a lack of negative impact on the dog. As Mancini (2017) explains, humans who know the dog well are in the best position to assess their responses and level of wellbeing with participating in research. Although we acknowledge that the dogs did not know they were being filmed (or what filming means), and the nature of fieldwork did not allow for participants to wear the camera prior to fieldwork to allow dogs to grow accustomed to it we leave the possibility open that their human may have been moving and behaving differently due to the camera mounted on them. This has the potential to impact the dog’s behavior. Such subtle shifts reinforce a posthuman understanding of research assemblages, in which technologies, humans, and animals co-constitute one another’s actions and affective states.

Cameras Relationally Constructing Data Analysis

Viewing 360-degree footage “creates a feeling of inhabiting the image, rather than simply seeing it” (Gómez Cruz, 2017, p. 31; see also Vatanen et al., 2022). Pagett’s (2023, p. 7) work on the craft of natural dyeing using a 360-degree camera allowed them to explore their data: able to pan the frame in any direction allowed for more of “a process of discovery than reliving a visit”. As ethnographers, we revisit our visual data, in part, through photos, videos made on our phones or traditional cameras, and mull over observations, feelings, and conversations. Our experience with the camera was, as Pagett wrote, powerful, allowing us to discover new elements of the field that had gone unnoticed in-person. Menning and Murris (2024, p. 1006) suggest that the use of video as part of a qualitative research method can play the role of an “improved human eye”, a metaphor we extend toward posthuman methods in multispecies ethnographies, whereby 360-degree cameras can act as a technological field companion or enhancement in the field by expanding vision beyond the limits of singular, human-centered attention.

Other ethnographers have observed that video data allows ethnographers to tune into the field “again and again”, each time developing a more nuanced understanding (Bursta et al., 2024, p. 319). The use of 360-degree recording during sled dog tourism kennel fieldwork allowed for more “holistic visual records, which may open up new opportunities for observation” (Tojo et al., 2021, p. 119). During an engaged conversation with a human participant, the focus will generally be on them-i.e. their mannerisms, words and intonation, body language. To have 360-degree footage ensures that a return to the field is possible, time and again, to pan the recorded footage in any direction to observe something or someone completely different. Ethnographers could return to the footage to “frame” a dog behind the ethnographer, out of view at the time. This acts as an example of how documenting 360-degree footage means that “all of what is captured can be considered equally relevant” (Gómez Cruz, 2017, p. 35 emphasis added). The camera, then, acts as a technological field companion or human-technological enhancement to the ethnographer in the field: its job being to ensure that all actors within view are documented, and their reality in that moment better represented in the data. Additionally, the data produced by 360-cameras acted as a technological field companion in constructing the data for analysis as the ethnographer changes positions in the footage by navigating the visuals within the recording. In this way, zooming in and out, moving up and down created new ways of seeing the data and hence affected the analysis of what was seen and reflected upon.

A further benefit of capturing such holistic footage was the ability to draw photographs from it. Often during field work, it might not yet be apparent what would be useful to document for future dissemination. During thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of interview transcripts, the ethnographer was able to return to the field, to “look around” anew and “take pictures” (screenshots or still frames) of objects (i.e. kennel builds) and interactions that could enrich their understandings of themes and act as helpful illustrations for analysis. The ability to return to the field during the go-along interview transcriptions proved helpful to present the field and its actors as accurately and holistically as possible in written data. In transcribing, it is important not only to transcribe the conversation, but include descriptors of relevant body language and emotional expressions (i.e. laughter, tears) which provide further context to verbalizations. With the 360-degree footage, the ethnographer was able to return to the field at points in the audio recording where it was unclear what was being laughed at or referred to identify its context, and describe it more accurately. For example, if only working with an audio recording, an ethnographer might write “[laughs]” in the transcript. If able to return to the field, they have the option of writing - if relevant to their research - “[laughs and shakes their head at two sled dogs playing in a kennel to their right]”.

While traditional video use might have framed the participant laughing, a 360-degree camera allows the ethnographer to pan over to the direction of a sound or where an individual is looking for further contextual understanding. This allows for a better representation of situations and acts as a tool to represent multispecies participants in written outputs, despite them not making noise or being the focus of the data collection in that moment. This also includes ethnographical self-reflections, with potential to improve multispecies ethnography skills. By shifting who and what becomes perceptible, the technology materially supports posthuman ambitions to decentre the human as privileged knower.

Tool for Improvement

To borrow from Gómez Cruz (2017, pp. 35-36), revisiting the field through 360-degree footage can be a significant tool “for reflexivity. The ethnographer can see herself in the field and ask herself “how did I feel?”, “What caught my attention?” and “What I’m [sic] seeing now that I didn’t see before”? Due to the nature of this research, there were multiple fieldwork trips that left an emotional residue on the ethnographer for some time. Certain observations and conversations were replayed, and the ethnographer questioned their responses in certain instances. In one interview, for example, the conversation turned to the killing of sled dogs and the complicated, at times conflicting, emotions a participant felt about their practice of shooting their sled dogs, rather than bringing them to the vet to be euthanized. Later, the first author wondered whether she could have said or done something to allow the participant to feel even more comfortable in sharing vulnerable insights. Using the 360-degree footage, she was able to not only reflect on this but observe everything as many times as needed to gain better clarity of both the participant’s and ethnographer’s body language and words. Comparable experiences were noted by an ethnographer conducting fieldwork in the sled dog tourism industry in Finnish Lapland: during a mobile video ethnography using 2D GoPro cameras, they were putting booties on a sled dog and felt observed by the tourism guides. In their notes, they wrote how, “when going back over the scene on the video with the guides” (Äijälä et al., 2025, p. 127, emphasis in original) they were educated about how their technique could be improved. In this way, the ethnographer developed their understanding and skill with dogs in the field. This was made possible with video footage for reference.

Improving the skills of early career researchers through rewatching recorded interviews is not a new practice. Uhrenfeldt and colleagues (2007) had spotlighted the usefulness of doing so with early career researchers, long before the higher prevalence of video usage in contemporary ethnographies. They proposed that this was far superior to ethnographers improving their skills through revisiting transcripts and reflecting on wording alone. We agree with this and appreciate its relevance for ethnographers of all experience levels. This article extends the practice of rewatching recorded interviews to improve ethnographic skill in two main ways by presenting: 1) the strength in revisiting 360-degree footage that allows researchers to observe a fuller context than a single-focus camera, and 2) the usefulness of doing so in a multispecies context, where ethnographers are not only interviewing humans, but also engaging (directly or from a distance) with animals. With the 360-degree footage, ethnographers might, upon revisiting the field, have a heightened ability to notice how a change of expression or engagement with participants might be beneficial in similar future encounters. In this way, 360-degree cameras can act as technological field companions that support the improvement of multispecies ethnographers’ practices. Such reflexive encounters highlight a posthuman methodological positioning in which technologies do not merely record but actively participate in relational attunement, accountability, and care.

Challenges

As with any research method, there are limitations. We identified five primary challenges. First, it can be stressful to ensure that the lens remains in good condition when conducting multispecies ethnographic fieldwork. Conducting multispecies ethnographies introduces equipment to risks of damage - e.g. by animals, work equipment, or weather conditions. The risk of damaging the camera lens was high, especially when within reach of dogs. Second, setting up the camera, app connection, and harness might be rushed or not possible – particularly when conducting fieldwork within multispecies workplaces such as sled dog kennels. Third, the battery life is shorter than that of traditional cameras. Having to carry multiple batteries and replace these during ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in multispecies environments, would clearly interrupt conversations, observations, and activities. Thus, an external battery was used to avoid interruptions (Image 4), held up by a gimbal. When the camera was mounted on the harness, Velcro kept the battery on the hard plate at the front of the harness. The battery’s short cable was then connected to the camera, which kept it charged, allowing for longer recordings. Fourth, comparable to differences in battery life between 360-degree and traditional cameras, the capturing of “extensive all-around footage produces vast quantities of data” (Pagett, 2023, p. 7). This is one of the more critical challenges of utilizing 360-degree cameras to collect data, particularly in larger amounts.

Discussion and Conclusion

The 360-degree camera became both a technological field companion and enhancement during our fieldwork. It recorded data that helped augment human capacities for capturing multispecies environments and realities. Unlike early, more anthropocentric uses of technology, the purpose of the fieldwork we conducted was not to focus on the field site as a space from which to generate transcribable data emerging from human conversations. Rather, the filmed material presented glimpses into the lives of both dogs and humans. By representing these multispecies worlds, rather than solely speaking about them, we contend that this fulfilled the most vital aim of multispecies ethnography: the portrayal of multispecies actors within a field site without giving primacy to one species over another and, by extension, this represents a significant, practical step forward in understanding the “how” of multispecies ethnographies through a posthuman sensibility that decenters the researcher’s privileged optics.

Nonetheless, there are various “thorny” ethical questions concerning methods that ethnographers must navigate (Adams et al., 2023, p. 170). One of the most challenging ethical provocations has been laid down by posthuman scholars (e.g. Braidotti, 2019; Lindgren & Öhman, 2019), particularly in grappling with the practical incorporation of animals in methods and field-stories. The application of posthumanism has been relatively limited within methodological inquiries about visual data gathering. This article seeks to highlight how this works practically, how it reconfigures the researcher’s embodied presence, how it expands qualitative inquiry beyond narrow anthropocentric boundaries, and what limitations remain.

Our central argument is that incorporating 360-degree cameras into multispecies ethnographic fieldwork as either a technological field companion to the ethnographer or a technological enhancement to their human capabilities can reshape how we engage with and represent multi- and interspecies realities. This technology allows for a methodological and perspectival shift that enables ethnographers to prioritize presence while in the field while nevertheless capturing rich, layered visual data for later multisensory reflection through the observation of 360-degree footage, images, and transcripts. We contend that this better fulfills a key hope of the posthuman project, namely, to expand social meaning-making beyond anthropocentric (and power-laden) interests and concerns and to foreground distributed agencies in producing knowledge.

While our empirical case study was geographically situated in Finnish Lapland and concerned with humans and sled dogs working in tourism, we see relevance for international multispecies contexts more broadly. For example, we envision the use of this style of multispecies ethnography with other domesticated species in human-animal working roles, such as horses, mules, donkeys, reindeer, guide and assistance dogs, police, customs and security dogs as prime contexts for understanding the human-animal relational setting and embodiment in a more encompassing sense. Future studies using this methodology and methods could include closer collaborations with animal behavior scientists to, for example, strengthen understandings of potential animal perspectives and behaviors further. Considering how dogs perceive certain colors, for example, was not incorporated into this article’s approach. Therefore, it was not questioned whether the use of the orange bag to weigh puppies (Image 5), was chosen coincidentally or whether it supported the dog’s experience being weighed, for example. We encourage future approaches to consider such detailed aspects to gain deeper understandings of dog participants’ experiences. For future analysis of 360-degree footage as part of multispecies ethnographies, we see significant potential application for frame-by-frame. Previous analysis of dog footage has resulted in rich analysis through a frame-by-frame coding of video footage, albeit not filmed with 360-degree cameras. For example, Bekoff (1955) catalogued and coded 35 specific actions to understand dogs’ play signals to better understand social play. Horowitz and Hecht (2016) coded, frame-by-frame, 187 “play bouts” to deepen knowledge of dog-human play. These could be further utilised as part of multispecies ethnographies too.

The holistic 360-degree footage preserves instances that may otherwise go unnoticed in the moment or be lost to memory. Multispecies ethnographers must navigate the complexity of documenting interspecies dynamics and engage ethically and attentively with multispecies participants, making it invaluable to revisit the field to observe and reflect. A key advantage of the mounted 360-degree camera – a technological field companion - lies in its technical capacity to record its spherical field of view simultaneously, and in its epistemological, ethical possibilities. It redistributes agency in visual representation, challenging conventional power dynamics by decentering the ethnographer’s gaze to encourage a centering of the aforementioned “contact zones” (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010) and the messy engagements and lived realities between species. The aim is to support more inclusive and reflexive modes of observation. As the camera records without framing, it captures what is behind, beside and beneath - the overlooked, the ambient, the backgrounded - thereby broadening the ethnographic lens to include quiet and often unnoticed moments of animal presences. This aligns with feminist and posthumanist commitments to representing life otherwise; more attentively, relationally, and with care.

The 360-degree camera does not replace traditional methods of ethnographic documentation, and has limitations. However, through revisiting footage, ethnographers may improve their practice. They can observe others, but also themselves: where their attention lingered, what was overlooked, and how their presence shaped interactions. It thus acts as a promising tool to improve multispecies ethnographic skills and future methodological developments through cultivating ongoing reflexivity and accountability to multispecies participants. At the same time, we are mindful that there is also the ontological charge that it may represent another technology that reproduces humanist norms. As with other attempts to flatten hierarchies between human and animals’ forms of expression (e.g. Wels & Kamsteeg, 2022; Äijälä, 2021), it is an ever-present concern. Through our posthuman framing, we reason that technical equipment is never complete: there are always potential additions which potentially elevate the interaction and, thus, research processes. Yet, the chance to include a more complex multispecies representation can offer more benefits than drawbacks, and the speed of technological advancements is promising in mitigating current practical challenges. What 360-degree cameras offer in return is the possibility of enhancing our human abilities while in the field and utilizing a technological field companion that can support ethnographers in documenting and inhabiting the field long after having left it.

As technological field companions, 360-degree cameras allow us to discover and engage with the field again, rather than merely recalling. They encourage us to attend to, rather than solely retrospectively interpret, the full range of what can be apprehended in a moment or a longer period of time. In this sense, 360-degree footage does more than support memory - it participates in knowledge-making as an active field companion in cultivating a deeper relational sensibility in multispecies ethnographies. It invites multispecies ethnographers to dwell in the field anew, and to ask not only what they saw, but what - or who - they might yet see.