Visual Data and Visual Methods in Social Sciences

About

Workshop contents and objectives

The prevalence of visual elements in our daily lives, such as visual communication in digital and social media, advertising, corporate communication, and video games, underscores the importance for social scientists to handle and analyze visual data proficiently and adequately. Additionally, the widespread availability of user-friendly visual technologies, such as smartphones that enable ubiquitous photography and computing, present promising opportunities for using visual methods when conducting research on social phenomena. In other words, the visual approaches in the social sciences are not only concerned with the analysis of visual data and of visual material. Visuals can also be fruitfully used for research purposes. Both aspects will be covered in this workshop.

The workshop provides an introduction to visual data and visual methods and illustrates the use of different kinds of visuals in the research process, discussing: A) the collection and production of various forms of visual data, B) the analysis and interpretation of visual data and C) the use of visual methods in research designs. While both quantitative and qualitative approaches will be discussed, emphasis will be placed on qualitative visual research. Throughout the workshop, we will also focus on the ethical challenges associated with visual research, including the renewed attention to reflexivity, positionality, and embodiment.

Workshop design

The objective of the course is to encourage critical reflection on the appropriate application of various forms of visual research. The instructional approach integrates both theoretical insights and practical experimentation, offering students the chance to engage in hands-on exploration of various visual methods, including visual or photo elicitation, visual essay, visual ethnography, visual card sorting, and visual analysis. Sessions will also cover theoretical and practical engagement with ethical issues in visual and creative research. Students will be invited to produce and work with their own visual data before and during the workshop session.

Detailed lecture plan (daily schedule)

Day 1
Introduction

Critical introduction to visual research: Why is it useful to apply visual methods and to use visual data in the social sciences? What kind of knowledge regarding the visual mode is required to adequately analyze and interpret visual data?
Overview of different kinds of visual data in research processes: What are the main differences between researcher-produced and participant-produced visual data? And what are the respective implications for the research process and the relationship between researcher and participant?
Day 2
Ethnographic approaches: observing and capturing

Producing visual data for research: What do we want to capture and how to it? How do the ways we conduct the recordings matter for how the object of study manifests itself? What about engaging other senses in our research?
The Visual Essay: What are the main features of this well-established visual academic output? What tools do we use to create a compelling visual narrative?
Day 3
Participatory approaches and “creative” visual techniques: Photo/ Video elicitation and card sorting

How can respondents become active partners in visual research and be engaged in the production (e.g. network-cards, drawing-based exercises) and in the discussion or analysis of visual material (e.g. photo elicitation)?
Exploring ethical issues in visual research: participants’ empowerment, what is it about? What does it mean to bring a feminist ethos to participatory creative methods research?
Day 4
Analyzing visual data: Quantitative and qualitative visual content analysis

How can we make sense of images and visual data? What can social scientific approaches learn from other analytical traditions?
From coding to interpretation: How can large and small sets of visual material be analyzed? How to combine qualitative and quantitative approaches of visual content analysis to tackle the large amounts of visual data we encounter in basically all spheres of social life?
Day 5
Video analysis & Conclusion

Analyzing video data: How do we approach it systematically? What are the most important traditions in analyzing video (e.g., multimodal sequential analysis)? How do we adapt them to analyse social media video content?
Embodied Visual Analysis: How to acknowledge positionality and context during the analysis phase?
Conclusion and take-aways related to the students’ own research projects.

This is a tentative schedule. Minor changes might occur, depending on the learning pace of the students and any unforeseen contingencies.

Class materials

Prior to the workshop, students will be asked to perform small visual exercises. The instructions and all the relevant reading materials will be circulated before the start of the workshop.

**The Summer School cannot grant credits. We only deliver a Certificate of Participation, i.e. we certify your attendance.**

If you consider using Summer School workshops to obtain credits (ECTS), you will have to investigate at your home institution (contact the person/institute responsible for your degree) to find out whether they recognise the Summer School, how many credits can be earned from a workshop/course with roughly 35 hours of teaching, no graded work, and no exams.

Make sure to investigate this matter before registering if this is important to you.

Course leader

Katharina Lobinger is Associate Professor for online communication at the Institute of Digital Technologies for Communication (ITDxC) at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). Patricia Prieto-Blanco is a lecturer in Digital Media Practice in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University

Target group

graduate students, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, ECRs

Prerequisites

Students should be familiar with general notions of qualitative and quantitative research and be aware of their different orientations. Students should be interested in research that involving, among others, visual data and visual methods. The indicated readings serve as further references but are not mandatory preparatory readings.

Fee info