Visual methodology: previously, now and in the future

2016

The handbook is a large volume at 754 pages and a traditional approach to a book review would have been difficult. For this reason, we have chosen to draw out a few key themes, which arose from our group discussion of the book. These themes relate to what we felt to be forward thinking in the handbook, but also to points that need problematising further. Many of the issues raised in the handbook were interesting to reflect on as a group of relatively young academics new to social sciences. As a group of previously trained art historians, designers and architects now working in education, the book summarises much of what we have found in our transition from visual-based disciplines into the social sciences. This also relates to what it is to be from a generation that has grown up with images playing a large part of the way in which we make meaning, going into a group of established social science academics used to working with words. We feel that this handbook is a great resource for thinking about many of these issues.

Researching Social Problems, 2019

This chapter explains how visuals enhance the study of social problems through four examples of data collection and research dissemination. The first example studies meaning differentiation by examining photographs that represent the concept of community. The second studies social isolation via network graphs of social media connectivity. In the third example, the problem of racial segregation is critically analyzed through maps that serve as visual tools for disseminating information about this social problem. The fourth example also considers visuals in the context of data dissemination, studying how the use of data visualization ("DataViz") to teach undergraduates about income inequality impacts their behavior.

… Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative …, 2008

The author argues that visual methods are at the crossroads. They can remain in a niche or move into the mainstream by also addressing all people using visual materials. In the social sciences, visual methods encompass photography, video, and graphic representations. With respect to the visual, one has to note that all interpretations that are ontologically dependent on photography require more interpretation. "Looking at" means "being framed by," and this means also the picture maker who is also considered to be a viewer. For the social sciences, pictures provide us with personal insights as well as with a personal record of spatial and social relationships. On this basis one may raise questions like "how pattern variations occur over time?,"

2011

MARTIN, KELLY NORRIS. Visual Research: Introducing a Schema for Methodologies and Contexts. (Under the direction of Victoria J. Gallagher.) Studying the visual has become tremendously important to many disciplines because images express a range of human experience sometimes ambiguously articulated in verbal discourse, namely, "spatially oriented, nonlinear, multidimensional, and dynamic" human experiences (Foss, 2005, p. 143). In fact, the power of the image to plainly communicate occurs not "in spite of language's absence but also frequently because of language's absence" (Ott & Dickinson, 2009, p. 392). Presently, the challenge for visual research is that scholars investigate images from varied disciplines with separate and distinctive methods with little discussion or exchange across fields. Furthermore, more disciplines are requiring students to take courses in visual communication and more professors are being hired to teach those courses. However, these visual communication professors have nowhere to go (in the United States) in order to become prepared to teach and conduct research in visual communication. They enroll in programs in journalism and mass communication, linguistics, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and so on. Then, they either adapt what they learn from these fields to the field of visual communication or they teach themselves about the methods, theories, and literature of visual communication. This project focused on comparing and contrasting the strengths and limitations of various visual research methods in order to demonstrate the breadth of the methods and how they inform one another. The goals of this project were to introduce 1) four primary methodological approaches to visual research: visual rhetoric, visual studies visual communication and design-making, 2) a visual organizational schema that textually and graphically maps the hierarchical relationships of numerous strategies/perspectives and techniques of visual research methods 3) a presentation of the possibilities afforded by the use of different and combined methods. Without intellectual exchange between these schools vi ("The Beast"); Nick Temple for his help with the avatar project and friendship throughout all six years of graduate school; all the CRDM students, especially Dr. Anna Turnage, Kathy Oswald ("don't fight it"), Shayne Pepper ("Donna!") and Dawn Shepherd for their support and enthusiasm and Michael Dougherty for his friendship and laughter. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES.

2008

Over the last two decades there has been a global surge in interest in visual research methods. Word and number-based researchers are coming to realise there is considerable potential for gaining knowledge if image-based methodologies are adopted. This paper provides and overview of approaches and perspectives broken down into five easily digested sections to be consumed wholly or in part: early visual research; researcher created data; respondent created data; research design; and visual ethics. The paper will be of particular interest to qualitative social scientists new to visual methods or those with little experience of their application. A wide range of carefully selected references and resources are included to provide the reader with further in-depth insights.

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.

Beijing International Review of Education, 2020

In visual culture, people would like to perceive, express, and negotiate the meanings of social world visually so that the status of the visual has reached that of written word and narrative. Therefore, social researchers are motivated to develop visual method-ologies to examine the visual dimension of social worlds. According to them, the visual methodologies could generate richer information for us to understand social phenomena than the traditional quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Therefore, there is a burgeoning uptake of visual research methods in different fields of social sciences. Considering the ubiquity and importance of the visual in the world for education, the Beijing International Review of Education has organized this special issue to discuss some of the theoretical and methodological issues of visual research methods in educational research. Keywords visual methodology-visual culture-research method-photovoice-education research

This paper explores arguments about the nature of visual data, the applicability of what is considered epistemologically appropriate and the decision making which needs to accompany any appraisal of methodological process in education research. It will outline what is believed to be a key challenge of visual methodology: how to combine large scale, open-ended data sets with acceptable and rigorous analysis techniques and use practical examples of data collected and analyzed across a variety of projects to highlight areas of contention in terms of the nature and warrant of the resulting knowledge. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets, the affordances and constraints of the research process will be explored. This will lead to the presentation of a typology of visual data collection, analysis and synthesis which, it will be argued, can support researchers in finding a vocabulary to articulate a more rigorous visual methodological process to relate the findings of this relatively new approach with other research methods and techniques.