Interpreting Visual Images

Question 1

Types of Visual methods

Answer 1

• Researcher recording
  of data
  (including patterns of
  visual aspects of
  social life)
• Photo elicitation
  (any kind of visual material)
• Participant recording
• Auto-elicitation
  (interviewee produces
  photos, drawings, etc)

Question 2

‘Thick description’

Answer 2

Contain information that can be
identified and measured in
many different ways

Repositories of meaning
“that are as puzzling as
they are fanscinating”
(Grady, 1996:10)

Question 3

How to do?

Answer 3

Images require repeated interrogation
(???????????????),
because their meanings
are indeterminate

:Captured from those pictured?
:Imposed by the photographer?
Drawn from the viewer?

Question 4

Photograph as record

Answer 4

For decades,
photography has been
used by governments,
scientists and media
to record social events,
patterns & changes

(Example of government
recording of social change:
Lange, The Migrant Mother, 1936)

Question 5

True or not?

Answer 5

Cannot give historical context & knowledge

It expsoses a story,
but do not and
cannot explain it

It is a way of telling story,
a single interpretation of reality

Individual reader who must decide
whether or not it is true

Question 6

Reading cartoons

Answer 6

Evidence of public discourse
about the issue in its
wide social and cultural contexts

Portray social matters
tell people about they way
that issues are understood
and valued publicly

Question 7

Meme

Answer 7

An idea or thought
(an image, quote, symbol, joke)
that spreads from
person to person
in school, work, the media
or society at large -
becoming popular and easily recognizable

Question 8

How sociology use images?

Answer 8

Help to research, understand and
communicate knowledge of
the social world

Need to establish the context -
rules, uses, conventions -
that make images sociologicla
(Backer, 1995)