Lecture notes
Visual Analysis
- Institution
- City University (City)
Theorising ‘the visual’ in social research Visual Approaches in Sociology Semiotics (language of signs) Reading visual images (with examples)
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QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOCIALRESEARCH DATA
SG2056
Week 5: Visual Analysis
, • Theorising ‘the visual’ in social research
• Visual Approaches in Sociology
TODAY
• Semiotics (language of signs)
• Reading visual images (with examples)
, • Banks (2018) begins Using Visual Data in Qualitat
Research with an important reminder: the use
visual images in social research has a vexe
history…
THE • E.g., Centrality of illustration to the racialised an
HISTORY OF sexual projects of European colonialism (McCli
IMAGES AND 1995, Hall 1997).
SOCIAL • E.g., the use of the photograph in the Victorian
move towards ‘scientific’ racism – categorisatio
RESEARCH social groups as ‘races’ as justifications for
oppression, and ‘criminality/deviancy’ and ‘insan
(Banks 2018).
• E.g., In Anthropology/ethnography – the ‘other’
the ‘exotic’.
• As such, the story of visual social research is tie
histories of technological capacity as well as
ideologies.
, • Visual sociology has also been consi
less ‘serious’ than text/data-based
research.
• “Why do certain forms of data colle
become defined as inherently ‘politi
while other forms are defined as ‘ne
THE VISUAL AND and ‘scientific’? Historically photogra
SOCIOLOGY were discredited as a legitimate form
‘evidence’ in mainstream sociology
journals, in part, because in the early
twentieth century sociology was en
in a campaign to establish itself as a
‘science’ and anxieties were generat
visual images because they were
associated with photojournalism an
‘political’ activism rather than viewe
apolitical academic inquiry.” Winddan
Twine, F (2006)
, VISUALISING DATA
• Visualisation of social data/experience and is one of the
ways we make sense of social life and meaning.
• For example, John Snow’s use of data and maps in 1884
London Cholera outbreak (Banks 2018).
• In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois used modernist design, census
data and data visualisation to demonstrate the agency of,
and economic oppression faced by, Black Americans
(Battle-Baptiste and Rusert 2018 and Traue 2019)
• Today, ‘data visualisation’ is recognised as a central part
of effective social science communication.
, Zuev and Bratchford (2023) discuss
living in times of ‘image data stream
• Centrality of the visual to techno
surveillance – drones, facial recog
software and surveillance cultures
AN EXPANDING CONCEPT
• The production of online content
OF ‘THE VISUAL’ means we can think about the rela
data – how the visual is shared an
reproduced across time and geog
place.
• The production of AI imagery – w
sociology of an image which is ma
produced?
, • The analysis of images (still and moving)
• Usually (though not exclusively) qualitat
❑ Content of images
❑ Elements and their arrangement of eleme
ANALYSING IMAGES within images
❑ Processes of production of images
❑ Social context of images
❑ As well as visual spaces (buildings, urban s
Rose 2007)
, RESEARCH PRODUCED IMAGES
• Research produced images – imagery/video
produced through research process by the
researcher.
• Common in ethnography
• Critique of imagery and academic rigour
• Important critiques on the ethics of imagery in
social research, objectification of participants or
research ‘subjects’ and ‘othering’ process of
visualisation and analysis (Pauwels 2010)
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