Visual Research Method

Table of Contents
1. What is Visual Research Method?
2. Why use Visual Research Method?
3. History of the Use of Visuals
4. Relation of Visuals and Research
5. Types of Visual Data
6. Interpretation of Visuals
7. Reading Visual Images
8. Rhetoric of Visuals
9. Criticism on This Approach
10. Advantages of Using Visual Research Methods
11. Disadvantages
12. Visual Research Method and Literature
13. Ethics and Visual Data Usage
14. Conclusion
15. Works Cited

1. What is Visual Research Method?

Visual research is a type of research method that us used to visualize the research or create some
visuals to highlight the research. It mostly depends on production and representation of cultural and social
constructs through visual mediums. These artistic mediums of representing constructs are being used in
film, photography, drawings, paintings, and sculptures, literature etc. (Moss and Pini 2016).
2. Why use Visual Research Method?
I. Increasingly visual ocularcentric culture
II. shift from modernity to post modernity
III. Banks argues that looking, seeing and knowing have become perilously intertwined.
rendering our world as primarily a seen phenomenon (Banks 1-2)
IV. However, 'the study and use of visual images is only of use within broader sociological
research enterprises, rather than as ends in themselves. (Banks 178)
3. History of the Use of Visuals
I. Visuals were used to represent abstract concepts.
II. Visuals were used to represent objects, animals, and things.
4. Relation of Visuals and Research
I. The visual nature of the world
II. Making understandings of the world through images
III. Listening only to words is to turn a blind eye to much of the world.
IV. Breaking the hegemony of the word as a means of understanding.
V. The materiality of the world
VI. The creative tension between the word and the image : questioning established patterns and
breaking the taken-for-granted.
VII. The intrusive presence of the researcher
5. Types of Visual Data
I. Photographs
II. Videos
III. Drawings
IV. Diagrams
V. Movements, signs
VI. Representations of the material
6. Interpretation of Visuals
I. Internal content (1/2): Who are these people? What are they doing? Why? When? Where? In
whose interest?
II. External narrative (3): what are the processes of selection and composition that lie behind the
photos? What were their intentions?
III. Response (4): How could you use these photos for gaining a response with their authors,
subjects or others? (Banks 11)
7. Reading Visual Images
I. The term reading implies an implicit message being conveyed in the image
II. In fact reading relies on accumulated cultural knowledge (cultural capital) which the
individual has access to.
III. different reading positions which are inherently political.
IV. Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional
8. Rhetoric of Visuals
I. Use of Visual Tropes
II. City Building Images (Buildings can be concrete boundary markers, sites of contention,
statements of identity)
III. Denotation and Connotation
IV. Ethos, Logos and Pathos
V. Circuit of Culture (Identity, Representation, Production, Regulation and Consumption)
a) Production campaigns, intentions
b) Regulation hegemony and social control
c) Consumption desire economy - distinction
d) Identity constant negotiation
e) Representation political, basis for social meanings, regimes of thought, discourses
e.g. tourism, law and order, anthropological etc..
8. Criticism on This Approach
I. Potentially video as another link in chain
II. 'victimist gaze'
III. Visual medium appears transparent but selectively filmed and edited
IV. hence mediated by researcher
V. increases ethical problems
VI. temptation to include unsolicited material
9. Advantages of Using Visual Research Methods
I. comes to the viewer directly as perception.,
II. they have an apparent immediacy and realism which is different from that apprehended in the
'interiority' of our thoughts when we read a book.'
III. picks up non-verbal codes
10. Disadvantages
I. accessibility
II. subject may be more self-conscious
III. myth of transparency
 IV. time consuming
V. ethical issues permissions (covert filming)
VI. lack of quality
11. Visual Research Method and Literature
I. Graphic novels
II. Visual stories
III. Movies and films relation with literature
IV. Visual depiction of realities
V. Documentaries
12. Ethics and Visual Data Usage
I. Anonymity and Confidentiality
II. Sensitivity with participants
III. Sensitivity with ethics of the community and society
IV. Re-use requires forethought and persistence
V. Public data usage rules
VI. Morality and legality issues
13. Conclusion
14. Works Cited
Banks, Marcus. Visual Research Method in Social Sciences. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2001. Print.
Moss, J. and B. Pini. Visual Research Methods in Educational Research. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Print.\
Pink, Sara. "Interdisciplinary Agendas in Visual Research: Re-situating Visual Anthropology." Visual
Studies, vol. 18. no. 2 (2003): 179-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725860310001632029. Accessed on
01 Oct. 2017.
Spencer, Stephen. Visual Research Methods in Social Sciences: Awakening Visions. New York:
Routledge, 2011. Print.
Stanczak, Gregory C. Visual Research Methods: Image, Society and Representation. New Delhi: SAGE
Publications, 2007. Print.
"Visual Research Methods." Learn Higher. n. d. http://about.brighton.ac.uk/visuallearning/visual-research-
methods/. Accessed on 01 Oct. 20017.