Moving methods for contested spaces
Video with working cyclists
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8134366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amelia Thorpe (0000-0002-0474-6286, UNSW Sydney, corresponding author), Marilyn Johnson (0000-0003-1272-1684, UNSW Sydney), M J Johnson (UNSW Sydney), Derek Chong (0009-0004-9117-8185, UNSW Sydney) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1-18 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Mobilities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1745-0101 • E-ISSN: 1745-011X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17450101.2025.2605051 |
| OpenAlex | W7127452957 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 53 |
This paper discusses the use of naturalistic video footage to examine the experience of cycling in Australia’s two largest cities. The study centres on commercial cyclists, a cohort which grew rapidly during the COVID pandemic. Studies of commercial cycling – and particularly food delivery cycling – have focused primarily on the ills of delivery platforms and the gig economy. Complementing this research, we focus less on the work done by these cyclists and more on the spaces in which they work. As part of a larger study involving interviews and roadside observations, we used handlebar-mounted cameras to collect over 100 hours of footage from the perspective of these vital and often vulnerable workers. Here we focus on the insights naturalistic video footage can provide into commercial cyclists’ experience of city spaces. Extending the literature on mobile methods, we examine naturalistic video as moving in two senses: physically, travelling with participants, and affectively, encouraging empathy between cyclists, researchers and audiences. Naturalistic video footage provides a rich supplement to other data, presenting vivid examples that extend points made in interviews and fixed recordings. Naturalistic video footage also tells other stories, particularly about how delivery cyclists performatively reshape cities to create more permeable pathways. Finally, commercial cyclists are frequently demonised or infantilised. Naturalistic video footage opens new ways of communicating their stories by fostering empathetic encounters – emotionally moving audiences and helping to reshape how we think and talk about cities.
Action (physics · Field (mathematics · Perspective (graphical · Qualitative research · Work (physics · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · Educational Tools and Methods · Injury Epidemiology and Prevention
Pop-Up Cycleways
Doing Visual Ethnography
“Is your gig any good?” Analysing job quality in the Australian platform-based food-delivery sector
Video in Qualitative Research
Empathetic technologies
Walking with video
Embodied Precariat and Digital Control in the “Gig Economy”
Struggles of Delivery Workers in Brazil
Beyond utilitarian mobilities
Vélomobile Formations-in-Action
On constituting cyclists as ‘hazards’
Rearranging care while cycling under the Covid-19 pandemic in Quito, Ecuador
Accessibility as a ‘doing’
Cycling Assemblages, Self-Tracking Digital Technologies and Negotiating Gendered Subjectivities of Road Cyclists On-the-Move
Videographic geographies
The Joy of Biking Together
A Chance to Catch a Breath
Rethinking Mobile Methods
The Graphic Transcript
Working in the gig economy is boring
The New Mobilities Paradigm
Prefigurative Infrastructure
Generally Speaking People are in it for the Cycling and the Beer
"The real "Hawthorne effect
Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect
Platform-Capital's 'App-etite' for Control
Constructing Mobile Places between 'Leisure' and 'Transport
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |