360-Degree Video for Whole Scene Capture: From Immersive Realism to Immersive Holism in Place-Based Research

360-degree video is an affordable and easy-to-use technology for social science research. It holds significant potential for capturing spatio-temporal aspects of the social world from a fully omni-directional spatial perspective; however, gaps remain as to how it can be used to support field-based data collection and analysis. In this short piece we offer two contributions to the literature on 360-degree video for qualitative social science research on place. First, we draw on evidence from our multi-city study of ‘urban platform temporalities’ to develop a step-by-step procedure for producing and analyzing 360-degree digital video datasets, demonstrating the potential of the technology for what we term whole scene capture . We provide practical advice on software, hardware, camera usage, video processing, and ethical considerations; and introduce the 360-video qualitative coding technique of spherical simultaneous perspective . Adding new evidence of its use to already established literatures on 360-degree immersive video ethnographies and virtual human-environment exposure research, our method for systematic 360-degree capture of spatio-temporal data is applicable to a range of social science studies with a field-based data collection component. Finally, drawing together technological understandings of immersion from the field of VR with its ethnographic meaning, we then articulate the notion of immersive holism as a quality of 360-degree video that enables deep, meaningful, and comprehensive knowledge of place.