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Visual Research Methods

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Title: Visual Research Methods


1
Visual Research Methods
  • The everyday is extraordinary

2
Why Visual Methods?
  • Increasingly visual ocularcentric culture
  • shift from modernity to post modernity
  • Jenks argues that looking, seeing and knowing
    have become perilously intertwined. rendering
    our world as primarily a seen phenomenon (1995
    1-2)
  • However 'the study and use of visual images is
    only of use within broader sociological research
    enterprises, rather than as ends in themselves.
    (Bank, M 2001 178)

3
Research into Images
  • What is the image of, what is its content?
  • Who took it or made it, when and why?
  • How do others come to have it, how do they read
    it, what do they do with it?
  • Marcus Banks (2001) Visual Methods in Social
    Research, Sage p7

4
Approaches to the Image
  • Images as evidence as witness to important
    events - family snaps
  • As representations of society, nation,
    citizenship
  • As ideological dividing into an us and them
  • Constructing visual identities images as
    material visual forms.
  • Images in context of use

5
Consider the Image
  • there is no one-way visual method or
    perspective that has ascendancy over all other
    ways of sense making.
  • we dont see, we perceive since the former is
    a biological norm and the latter culturally and
    psychologically informed.
  • the visual, as objects and images, exists
    materially in the world but gain meaning from
    humans.
  • all images are regarded as polysemic
  • images can be researcher found (generated by
    others) or researcher
  • generated (created by the researcher). Both are
    integral to the visual research process.
  • A photograph does not show how things look. It
    is an image produced by a mechanical device, at a
    very specific moment, in a particular context by
    a person working within a set of personal
    parameters
  • (based on notes produced by visual sociologist
    Jon Prosser, Leeds Met 2006)

6
Reading images?
  • The term reading implies an implicit message
    being conveyed in the image
  • In fact reading relies on accumulated cultural
    knowledge (cultural capital) which the individual
    has access to.
  • There are also as Hall (1978) has pointed out
    different reading positions which are inherently
    political.
  • Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional

7
Using Images
  • Barthes concept of 'rhetoric of the image'
  • Images as complex conventional codes
  • Rhetoric is often contrasted with rationality and
    allied with radical relativism or nihilism
  • but... All discourse is unavoidably rhetorical
  • This presentation illustrates the power of images
    to condition our thinking

8
Use of Visual Tropes
our understanding of reality is fundamentally
relational. Reality is framed within systems of
analogy. Figures of speech enable us to see one
thing in terms of another Visual tropes act in
the same way
9
Eyes on the City
Buildings can be concrete boundary markers, sites
of contention, statements of identity
10
Critical Visual Methods
  • myth of objectivity
  • Ethical concerns exploitation or collaboration?
  • Obtrusiveness of video recording
  • Immediacy and complexity of the material gathered
  • 'the study and use of visual images is only of
    use within broader sociological research
    enterprises, rather than as ends in themselves.
    (Bank, M 2001 178)

11
Deep and Surface Structure
Denotation Connotation Myth E.g. Barthes
Mythologies 1953
12
(No Transcript)
13
Street performers La Rambla, Barcelona parody
of the cult of white celebrity whiter than
white minstrels?
14
(No Transcript)
15
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16
The Circuit of Culture
  • Production campaigns, intentions
  • Regulation hegemony and social control
  • Consumption desire economy - distinction
  • Identity constant negotiation
  • Representation political, basis for social
    meanings, regimes of thought, discourses eg
    tourism, law and order, anthropological etc..

17
Photograph by Panizza Allmark Edith Cowan
University, WA
18
Photograph by Panizza Allmark Edith Cowan
University, WA
19
Artefacts - Moral Panics
20
Genealogy of a 'moral panic' evidence from
diverse sources
1. Historical
2. Current Media
3. Observation
21
Tourism, commodification and white public
drinking
22
This is a kitchen
' I lie down here sometimes' ' yeah when he's
drunk'
Competing business interests vie for the small
parcel of land ..
This is my brother in law - he gets the
newspaper everyday..
23
Criticisms of this approach
  • Potentially video as another link in chain
  • 'victimist gaze'
  • Visual medium appears transparent but selectively
    filmed and edited
  • hence mediated by researcher
  • increases ethical problems
  • temptation to include unsolicited material

24
advantages
  • comes to the viewer directly as perception.,
  • they have an apparent immediacy and realism
    which is different from that apprehended in the
    'interiority' of our thoughts when we read a
    book.' (Jacka, T Petkovic J. 2000
  • picks up non-verbal codes

25
disadvantages
  • accessibility
  • subject may be more self-conscious
  • myth of transparency
  • time consuming
  • ethical issues permissions (covert filming)
  • lack of quality

26
3. Collaboration
  • 'Fieldwork should be a two-way engagement in
    which the subjectivity of the 'other' has the
    opportunity for self-assertion and the political
    nature of the definition of 'otherness' would be
    exposed and thereby open to resistance,
    negotiation and redefinition.' (Carol Warren 1982)

27
The Northern Territory's alcohol consumption is
one of the highest in the world, and certainly
the highest in Australia. In 2001 the alcohol
consumption rate was estimated at 1120 standard
drinks per person per year.
Up to 35 of Indigenous men do not drink alcohol
compared with 12 of non-Indigenous men. 29 to
80 of Indigenous women do not drink alcohol
compared with 19 to 25 of non- Indigenous
women. In the Northern Territory, 75 of
Aboriginal people do not drink alcohol at all.
28
Media Saturation
29
Images as Propaganda
30
Spectacles Seen Unseen
visualising consensus
31
Shop window in California June 1991 during
Desert Storm campaign
32
Bricolage and Visual Identity
33

Advertising to reduce the road toll Grey
Advertising campaign for Transport Accident
Commission in Victoria, 1990
34
Under the Skin of multiculturalism Links to real
media video clips
Identities
Arrival
Divided City
Introduction
Ethnic Competition
No limits
A sense of Identity
Media Representation
Assimilation
35
Bibliography
  • Banks, M (1995) Visual research methods Social
    Research Update Department of Sociology,
    University of Surrey, Winter 1995
  • Banks, M (2000) Visual Methods in Social
    Research, Sage
  • Barthes, R (1982) Image, Music, Text, Flamingo
  • Barthes, R, (1972) Mythologies, Paladin
  • Chandler, D. 'Semiotics For Beginners'. WWW
    URL http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem
    iotic.html
  • Floch, Jean-Marie (2000) Visual Identities
    (trans. Pierre Van Osselaer Alec McHoul).
    London Continuum
  • Forceville, Charles (1996) Pictorial Metaphor in
    Advertising. London Routledge
  • Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things.
    London Tavistock
  • Grey Advertising Campaign (1994) Transport
    Accident Commission of Victoria
  • Hall, Stuart (1973 1980) 'Encoding/decoding'.
    In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
    (Ed.) Culture, Media, Language Working Papers
    in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 London Hutchinson,
    pp. 128-38
  • Jacka, T Petkovic J. (2000) Ethnography and
    Video Researching Women in China's Floating
    Population, Intersections, back issues, Parts 1
    2 Available Onlinehttp//wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/
    intersections/back_issues/tampt1.html (Accessed
    2/1/05)
  • Jenks, C. (Ed.) (1995) Visual Culture, Routledge
  • Mitchell, WJT (1995) Picture Theory, University
    of Chicago Press
  • Prosser Jon (2006) Working Paper Researching
    with visual images Some guidance notes and a
    glossary for beginners Real Life Methods
    reallifemethods_at_manchester.ac.uk University of
    Manchester University of Leeds, July 2006
  • Rose (2001) Visual Methodologies, Sage
  • Spencer, S (2006) Race and Ethnicity Culture,
    Identity and Representation, Routledge
  • Spencer, S (2005) Contested Homelands Darwin's
    'itinerant problem' in Pacific Journalism Review,
    Auckland University New Zealand
  • Also Available Online http//www.pariahnt.org/onem
    iledam/pages/Framing_the_Fringe_Dwellers.htm
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