Visual Methodologies for Communication Studies: making the familiar strange and interesting again (original) (raw)
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My foray into the visual methods begins with a series of problems encountered while researching subject positioning and intersubjectivity as they played out in the shooting of one of my recent documentaries, The Ecstatic. Authoring the film myself, how was I to reflexively use the images I filmed to provide data for my analysis of the dynamics of the film shoot as a social, cultural event, and thus a site for ethnographic enquiry? Even further complicating matters was that this particular project also demanded that I analyze the images in-sequence, that is to say, that I conduct a filmic analysis of the very same images after bits of film had been edited into a unified text. How were these two phenomena -the processual image as a source of data about cultural and social life, or the image as a cultural text, an artifact -different?
Camera as Witness, Image as Sign: The Study of Visual Communication in Communication Research
This section of the Communication Yearbook summarizes the state of the study of visual communication in communications research. The author outlines major themes and theories characterizing the history of visual communication studies and concludes by isolating key issues and current trends in the field. CHAPTER CONTENTS: - History and Theory Film Studies The Psychology of Art and Visual Representation Word and Image: Extratextual & Intertextual Influences - The Anthropology/Sociology of Visual Communication - Interdisciplinary Crosscurrents - An Institutional Infrastructure - Key Issues and Current Trends: The State of the Field
Showing/Sharing: Analysing Visual Communication from a Praxeological Perspective
This contribution proposes a methodological framework for empirical research into visual practices on social media. The framework identifies practices, pictures and platforms as relevant dimensions of analysis. It is mainly developed within, and is compatible with qualitative, interpretive approaches which focus on visual communication as part of everyday personal communicative practices. Two screenshots from Instagram and Facebook are introduced as empirical examples to investigate collaborative practices of meaning-making relating to pictures on social media. While social media seems to augment reflexive, processual practices of negotiating identities, visual media, in particular, amps up aesthetic, ambivalent and embodied dimensions within these practices.
Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2005
This paper addresses epistemological and methodological issues that surfaced for the authors in a visual research project. Engaging with visual discourse necessitated the authors' interrogation of their own take on issues associated with text and context and the role of reflexivity in the research process. This reflection led us to ruminate still further about the insights that visual discourse could have for qualitative data in general. Thus, the paper first considers the validity of visual data before moving on to address issues of text/context and reflexivity through reference to our work with racist graffiti, in particular, that aimed at people seeking asylum in the UK. In conclusion, the paper argues that there is much to learn from engaging with visual discourse, in terms of understanding social phenomena as well as the process of doing research. Qualitative Research in Psychology 2005; 2: 213 Á/225
‘Visual Culture, Visual Methods.’ Ph.D Summer School. Aarhus University, June 2015.
Visual culture encompasses more than the study of images or the use of visual methods. It takes as its premise the idea that the way people experience their reality goes well beyond the material or the textual. The perspective of visual culture turns our attention toward the centrality of visual experience in everyday life. This course considers the conceptual premises for visual sensemaking and focuses on methods of analysis and interpretation that challenge text-centric approaches. Particularly in contemporary mediatized contexts, seemingly endless streams of images, sounds, and fragments of information characterize and constitute social life. How do we make sense of visual expressions or visual aspects of culture? How do we use visual methods or more broadly, how do we challenge methods that rely on (or were designed for) the analysis of texts? What does a ‘visual culture’ approach look like in practice? The goal of this course is to explore these questions theoretically, discuss case studies, and also practice methods through experimental exercises and assignments.
2010
Visual research is still a rather dispersed and ill-defined domain within the social sciences. Despite a heightened interest in using visuals in research, efforts toward a more unified conceptual and methodological framework for dealing vigilantly with the specifics of this (relatively) new way of scholarly thinking and doing remain sparse and limited in scope. In this article, the author proposes a more encompassing and refined analytical framework for visual methods of research. The ''Integrated Framework'' tries to account for the great variety within each of the currently discerned types or methods. It does so by moving beyond the more or less arbitrary and often very hybridly defined modes and techniques, with a clear focus on what connects or transcends them. The second part of the article discusses a number of critical issues that have been raised while unfolding the framework. These issues continue to pose a challenge to a more visual social science, but can be turned into opportunities for advancement when dealt with appropriately.
Using Creative Visual Research Methods to Understand Media Audiences
MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung, 2005
This article introduces an emerging area of qualitative media «audience» research, in which individuals are asked to produce media or visual material themselves, as a way of exploring their relationship with particular issues or dimensions of media. The process of making a creative visual artefact – as well as the artefact itself (which may be, for example, a video, drawing, collage, or imagined magazine cover) – offers a reflective entry-point into an exploration of individuals» relationships with media culture. This article sets out some of the origins, rationale and philosophy underlying this methodological approach; briefly discusses two example studies (one in which children made videos to consider their relationship with the environment, and one in which young people drew pictures of celebrities as part of an examination of their aspirations and identifications with stars); and finally considers some emerging issues for further development of this method.