29 Visual Methods in Research

Dalia Chakrabarti

1. Introduction

Visuals have now become integral to every communication – formal or informal, face-to-face or distant. Gone are the days of words-only letters, now we text Smilies to express our feelings, store visual profiles for virtual communication, or simply see each other in Skype and WhatsApp. Even the impersonal communication for target audience, for example, an advertisement for a consumer item or a government programme, invariably contains visuals, still as well as moving. Hence social researcher has to know how and why it is created, what it encodes, what is its impact, intended as well as unintended, and how underlying the appearance or form of objectivity of an image, there is a deep structure of meaning/s, which are essentially subjective in nature. Furthermore, the reproducibility of visual images, its accessibility across social strata, direct impact on viewers, and most importantly, its reconstructive power make it useful to record, illustrate and evaluate events and issues. This may eventually empower all those exposed to visuals either in course of creating it or just as a viewer, to bring about social change in a desired direction or to resist any attempt to harm them or others. Yet, it is only since the 1990s that the use of visual methods has started gaining ground in social sciences questioning the monopoly of quantitative methods in academic sociology. Rather than creating space for visuals in existing methodologies, Pink (2001) argues for new visually specific methodologies in social sciences.

2. Learning Outcome

Students of Sociology, equipped with the skill of using visual method can explore social reality through local visual experiences and practices like painting, sculptures, photographs or films etc. as well as through sociologists’ visual experiences and practices like photo-elicitation interviews or video-documentaries and its analyses. Visual representations offer us possibilities for empathy i.e. to imagine ourselves into the places represented in the photo, and the emotions ofthe photographed subjects (see image 1). This capacity might also have a persuasive potential (Pink 2008), leading towards some forms of social activism (see images 2, 3 and 4).

3. Understanding Visuals

The nature of visuals has been discussed here in terms of its myriad forms, the multiple sources of visuals, and defining attributes.

3.1. Forms of visuals

Visual methods encompass different forms of visuals like still photography, film, video, graphic representations like charts and maps. Some visuals are stationary as in photo albums, newspaper, billboards, handbill, advertisements on public walls, art albums, leaflets etc.; and some are moving as in cinema, documentary films, you tube, blogs etc. Still photography presents isolated images, whereas a film involves connected images, depicting trajectory of a narrative. Still photographs reveal what is going on at a particular point of time. Movies allow study of processes and complex interactions in its natural course, which may not be fully evident from an interview with a subject.

3.2. Sources of visuals

Images may be produced by the researcher, e.g. a documentary film on an event. Images are also found in cartoons, advertisements, paintings, family photo albums, or visual archives. While using images, produced by others, the researcher must be aware of underlying subjective positions. We may here follow Foucault (1979), who identifies the structural connection between knowledge and power. Both modern social science and the institution of modern state have used photography to define a category of people with specific characteristic attributes, and this construction serves their own agenda.1

3.3. Defining attributes of visuals

Social data can be expressed through visual, numeric or written forms. Visuals provide us with both objective as well as subjective information. The act of viewing and subsequent interpretation entails emotional engagement with a photo or a film. But the latter can also be conceived as an impersonal record of behaviour. Visuals usually appear in a package, with i) a frame signifying that the world of depicted object continues beyond the frame; ii) a caption, attributing specific meaning to it; and iii) written text contextualizing its meaning. The viewer confronts this whole package as given. It is left to the researcher to deconstruct it, and reassemble it differently. Visuals are of polysemic nature as its meanings differ. The photographer has her/his meaning. Those who have been photographed have their own version of the event. Similarly the viewers, other than the photographers and the photographed subjects, may have quite different take of the event. And all these interpretations are subject to change over time and in different contexts and there is no question of primacy of one particular meaning over the other. For example, Kargil war photography portrays, on one hand, the image of army as a calling of heroes (see image 5), and on the other reveals the cruelty of war (see images 6 and 7).

Meanings are different for different categories of people, e.g. the famous image of the collapse of World Trade Centre (see image 8) had been interpreted simultaneously as ‘war on civilization’ and as a war against American authoritarianism. Images of natural disasters like Uttarakhand disaster in monsoon 2013 show i) how powerless the man becomes vis-à-vis nature’s fury (see images 9 and 10), ii) how man’s greed destroys the ecology and eventually brings calamity of such a huge proportion (see images 11 and 12), and iii) how some people sacrificed life and leisure to save thousands of victims (see images 13 and 14). In the same line famine photographs, celebrity photos, political images contain varied meanings which can be explored and analyzed for understanding social realities. Photographs might expose social problems, and potentially challenge a regime, or they could be used for social control (to identify participants of a movement and punish them) or for maintaining status-quo. According to McQuire (1998: 47), the multiplicity and ambivalence of the meanings of images, and its simultaneous appearances of objectivity and subjectivity, questions the modern notion of truth as authentic, and thereby de-stabilises the basic premise of modernity.

Self Check Exercise 1:

1. Question: What are the forms of visuals studied by visual methods of social research?

1Both social science and state have used photography to ‘map humankind’, ‘to define humankind, as individuals, as types or genres of humankind, and as a species’ (Lury, C. Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity. Lon don: Routledge. 1998. p. 41). Sekula has criticised it as an attempt to establish and delimit the terrain of the ‘other’ (Sekula, A. “The Archive and the Body” in The Contestof Meaning, edited by R. Bolton.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.1989. p. 343–346).

Answer: Visuals are found either in stationary or in moving forms. Former are represented by still photographs, advertisements on public walls, art albums, leaflets etc and the latter by cinema, documentary films, you tubeetc.

2. Question: What are the sources of visuals?

Answer: Visuals may be produced by the researcher, e.g. a documentary film on an event. These are also found in cartoons, advertisements, paintings, family photo albums, or visual archives.

3. Question: Does the image convey a single meaning?

Answer: Image has multiple meanings. In case of a photograph, for example, the photographer, those who have been photographed, and the viewers, other than the photographers and the photographed subjects – all may have quite different meanings of the same photograph. And all these interpretations are subject to change over time and in different contexts.

4. Visuals in Sociology

Visuals are used in multiple ways. Sociologists categorize parts of the world, thus creating data (the scientific mode); sociologists use their own subjective experience as a source of data (the phenomenological mode); sociologists structure their data into accounts (the narrative mode); sociologists build data from the point of view of their subjects (the reflexive mode). Images may be scientific, narrative, phenomenological or reflexive depending on how they are constructed, presented and viewed (Harper 1988: 61).

4.1. Scientific mode

In empirical research, by reading photographs researcher gets data regarding social structures and processes. Mead and Bateson’s study of Balinese character (1942), or use of photography by Collier and Collier (1986) for cataloguing cultural artifacts or architectural spaces such as house interiors, are good examples. One can measure social change by re-photographing same/similar phenomena (method used by Mark Klett 1984, Garry Rogers 1982, Jon Rieger 1987,BillGanzel 1984 among others). Old visual records can be retrieved from archives and private collections and then counter-posed vis-à-vis contemporary relevant photographs to locate changes (Harper 1988: 61-63).

4.2. Narrative mode

Sociologists may construct visual narratives or they might study frames from movie or videos. Richards and Lynch’s visual and narrated chronicle of Lynch’s death from cancer (1986) are examples of visual narratives. Video camera produces data that are more reliably retrievable than are memory and field notes. Replay and slow motion features make the analysis more intense and accurate. Researchers here should be aware of the problem of perspective, i.e. location of camera has a restrictive effect on the framing of reality, thereby eventually excluding some areas beyond the frame (Harper 1988:63-64).

4.3. Reflexive mode

Unlike the scientific and the narrative mode, in reflexive mode the subjects contribute in the definition of meaning along with the sociologists. Thus, the definitions are said to ‘reflect back’ from the subject. The researcher may begin photographing a subject, then requests the subjects to reflect on it. This method is called photo-elicitation. The subject may even guide the researcher to look at it from a completely different perspective (Harper 1988:64-66). Harper used it in a study of an auto mechanic’s work (Harper 1987).

4.4. Phenomenological Mode

Rolland Barthes (1981) classifies visuals on the basis of the qualitative difference of the impact of images. He found that some visuals move him emotionally, others communicate in a rational way, and some do both and others do neither. The quality of visuals to raise a rational or sociological interest, he calls the stadium; and that appeal as an object of art, he calls the punctum. Some photographs may communicate sociological insights in an artistically stimulating manner. Larry Sultan (1986), for example, works on old home movies to construct his own childhood memories and to partially understand what his father, who made the movies, experienced. Here the boundary line between sociology and art almost gets blurred. The personal interpretations of experience and meaning may be considered as the beginning rather than the end of sociological analysis (Harper 1988: 66-67).

5. Rise of visual method

Visual method came into prominence in 1990s with the slow incorporation of visual sociology in the mainstream.

5.1. Marginal status of visual sociology

Although both photography and sociology were born as products of modern forces of industrialization and bourgeois revolutions in Europe, there was hardly any interpenetration between the two for a long period of time. Photography in a way democratises knowledge. Previously only the rich and the powerful could access the world visually through painting and other arts, but the photographic image is mass-produced, and due to high reproducibility, mass-distributed, thereby making knowledge based on visual images available to all. Unfortunately, founding fathers of sociology did not use visuals and produced abstract images of society (Harper 1988: 55). Fyfe and Law (1988: 4) have identified some of the possible reasons for the marginal status of visuals in social sciences. They observe that though social sciences extensively use visual metaphors like structure and network, depictions are rarely used. Actually, the intense methodological debate in sociology leads to extensive use of verbal mode of communication, often at the cost of other non-dominant modes like the visual communication, as that would further complicate the situation by opening up new area of debate. Secondly, there was deliberate attempt by the anti-reductionists to delete the body from mainstream classical social theory to make it independent of biology and psychology. With the body, the eye too had been deleted, foreclosing possibility of a visual sociology. Currently the most important obstacle is a form of shyness on the part of sociologists to create or use images, which definitely requires specialized skill to use technology, an artistic sense to make it a visual treat and social sensitivity to create a sympathetic portrayal. In Grady’s words this can be a case of ‘performance anxiety’ (Grady 2001: 84).

5.2. Impact of documentary photography

Visual sociology gradually emerged from and still has affinity with the documentary photography, which, in turn, gradually developed from fine arts and portraiture photography (Harper 1988: 56). Photographic documentation varies substantially depending on who has undertaken the project and why it has been taken up. For example, during the 1930s, when the American government, under Farm Security Administration, sponsored a decade-long photographic documentation of the American Depression, the resultant photographs highlighted the values of patriotism and social stability. Contrastingly, the images produced on same issue by the Film and Photo League, a collective of socialist intellectuals, portrayed strikes, state violence and mass protest marches.

Since 1930s, with the rise of photo-journalism, sociologists started looking down upon it as a mere part of mass communication. This led to almost total rejection of visual images from academic sociological discussion and analysis. Even Chicago school did not use photographs for their field studies. By the post-World War era positivistic insistence on objectivity, and dominance of quantitative method made the exclusion of visuals almost complete. Only in 1960s, when West was facing crisis over issues of war, race, class, gender, etc. radical departure from mainstream became a reality in a few photographic studies of social movements. Furthermore, extensive photographic documentation of mass movements in America of 1960s forced sociologists to take note of it.

5.3. Visuals in positivistic frame

From the 1960s to the early 1980s, methodological debates centre on the question whether visual images and recordings can usefully support the positivistic project of social science. A photograph can be taken as an objective record of facts. Historian Beaumont Newhall notes that ‘the photograph has special value as evidence or proof’ (quoted in Hamilton 1997: 82). Photography emerged (during the 1830s) at a time when the philosophy of positivism was also moving into its heyday, and the two developed simultaneously (Berger 1982: 99). For some, the subjectivity and specificity of visual images render them invalid for the scientific project of sociology. Others respond that, under the right controls, the visuals can act as an objective recording method. Mead (1975) says that cameras left to film continuously without human intervention produce ‘objective materials’. On the same lines, Ivnis (1953) and Berenson (1948) argue that the mechanically produced photograph, untainted by subjective influences, gives an objective reproduction of the reality. The modern project of social science assumes that while information may be recorded visually, knowledge is produced through translation of this ‘data’ into written text(Wright 1998: 20).

5.4. Visuals in anti- positivistic frame

The post modern emphasis on specificity and experience, and recognition of the fact that both films as well as written texts are social constructs and fictions, created in the 1980s a favourable environment for the visuals. Unlike the realists, for whom, the purpose of visual method is to authentically record the reality, the critiques of positivism focus upon the impossibility of ‘true’ visual record, and the constructedness of the stories of films and videos2. Understanding visuals requires a reflexive

• 2 Clifford perceives knowledge as constructed narratives, in a word, ‘fictions’ The term ‘fiction’ reveals the impossibility of revealing the whole account of reality (Clifford, J. “Introduction: Partial Truths”. in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by J. Clifford and G. Marcus, Berkeley: University of California Press.1986. p 1–26).

examination of the context of image production taking into account the subjectivities and intentions of the actors involved in the production of images. Analysis should focus not only on the content of images, but on the meanings that different individuals give to those images in different contexts (Pink2001: 99). More recently, however, post-positivists qualify the rigid stance of early positivism and agree that a photograph is socially, indeed, politically constructed like any other cultural representation.

5.5. Alternative visual-specific method

In the 1990s, there is growing acceptance of the fact that the visual is not merely a ‘recording method’ and ‘support’ for a word-based discipline. As MacDougall (1997: 292) observes, in social sciences we locate a shift from word-and-sentence-based thought to image-and-sequence-based thought. He advocates alternative objectives and methodologies to deal with visuals abandoning the possibility of a purely objective social science and rejecting the superiority of written word as a medium of representation. There is, in fact, no essential hierarchy of knowledge3. Harper calls for a redefinition of the relationship between the researcher and the informant in the form of a collaborative approach (Harper 1998a: 24–41; 1998b: 130–149). He tries to incorporate the post-modern approach that ‘begins with the idea that the meaning of the photograph is constructed by the maker and the viewer, both of whom carry their social positions and interests to the photographic act’ (Harper 1998b: 140). Chaplin (1994:16) advocates a collaborative approach that reduces the distance between the discipline and its subject of study. Thus, she argues that rather than the visual being the ‘data’ for verbal ‘analysis’, the potential of the visual as knowledge and critical text should be explored. This calls for collaboration, not solely between researcher and informants, but also between the visual and textual and the producers of images and words.

All these recent efforts to create space for visuals validate the point made by Fyfe and Law that with the rejection of grand theory, large-scale generalising, and the pursuit of ‘laws’, and the resultant shift of focus on small-scale projects at a local level, social sciences ultimately have secured stability. Hence, time is up for adventures like pursuing visual method for social research (Fyfe and Law 1988: 1–14). Secondly, Michel Foucault’s (1979) reintroduction of an interest in the body restores the status and functions of eye, hence visuals are now acceptable. Thirdly, as Chaplin (1994: 245–247) points out, analysis is itself a social activity, just like the subject matter of social sciences. Social analysis is, therefore, reflexive in character. Thus, there is necessity of using new textual forms, popularly known as new literary forms, which are compatible with the reflexive character of social analysis itself. This new form, generated out of a critique of positivism, allows experimentation with visuals. Furthermore, the new technological developments play a crucial role enabling easy and inexpensive construction, manipulation and communication of visuals possible.

Self Check Exercise 2:

1 Question: What are the possible modes of sociological analysis of visuals?

3 Stoller reminds us, ‘it is representationally as well as analytically important to consider how perception in non-western societies devolves not simply from vision…but also from smell, touch, taste and hearing’ (Stoller, P. Sensuous Scholarship, Philadelphia. PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.1997.p xv–xvi).

Answer: Visuals may be constructed, presented and viewed differently in sociology. Scientific, narrative, phenomenological and reflexive are the possible modes of sociological analysis of visuals.

2. Question: What is the use of visuals in a positivistic research?

Answer: A visual image, for example a photograph can be taken as an objective record of facts in a positivistic research. To counter the problems of subjectivity and specificity of visual images, positivists suggest application of right controls like cameras may be left to film continuously without any human intervention.

3. Question: How do the critiques of positivism perceive a visual image?

Answer: The critiques of positivism focus upon the impossibility of ‘true’ visual record, and the constructedness of the stories of films.For them, understanding visuals requires a reflexive examination of the context of image production taking into account the subjectivities and intentions of the actors involved in the production of images. Analysis should focus not only on the content of images, but on the meanings that different individuals give to those images in different contexts.

6. Steps in Visual Method

Any sociological method, including the visual method, comprises three stages: defining a universe of meaning, sampling that universe, and coding the data. First, the researcher has to define the venues to be examined. In case of visual method, the chosen venue can be a magazine. Then the question would be, what kind of magazines to be examined. Second step is to draw a representative sample of the images contained in the selected magazines. Third step is coding the data. It is always better to develop a coding sheet in advance of the sampling process. One may add/modify categories during the process of research. The key in coding images is to identify just what the presence or the absence of some element in an image may indicate (Grady 2001: 95-96).

6.1. Data Collection/generation

Data collection or generation in visual method is possible through:

i) making visual representations;

ii) examining pre-existing visual representations; and iii) collaborating with social actors in the production of visual representations (Banks 1995). These can generally be planned before actual research. There can be unanticipated use of visuals as well. The nature of research project determines the choice of method. In case of visual method researcher should be very cautious about the possible reaction to his methods, and technologies, on the part of the people in the societies where the project will be carried out. Ethical questions, that is, whether photographs or videos of informants may put them in any political or moral crisis should also be considered. Even if informants participate in the process of research, it is unlikely that they fully understand its goals and implications just as the activist or researcher. Their consent is not necessarily an informed consent, and the researcher may (even if unintentionally) keep his/her real agenda hidden from the informants (Pink 2001: 40). True, user-friendly technologies have increasingly become accessible to the researchers. Still working with images remains a craft. Researcher may adopt any technique like photography, painting and drawing, sculpting, or filming to bring out relevant social meaning. Unlike the ‘objectifying’ approach of positivistic method, which does research on but not with people, visual method very often focuses on collaboration, where the agency becomes shared between the researcher and the informant. Here both, though not on an equal basis, contribute to generate a body of knowledge and gain a better understanding of social reality as well as the joy of creating a piece of art together.

6.2. Analysis of the visuals, produced and collected

The task of the researcher is to locate what has been represented by the images, how far those representations answer to his research questions, and then to triangulate this information to form an argument. One may identify either a pattern or a new trend of meaning from among apparently unrelated scenes. Meaning, as discussed earlier, can never be finally fixed. Stability of meaning forecloses the possibility of constructing new meanings. Codes are meaning systems shared by the members of a culture. Words and images carry meanings over which no one has complete control. Hence, the practice of trans-coding becomes important. It means taking an existing meaning and re-appropriating it for new meanings. Since the 1960s, when questions of representation and power acquired a centrality in the politics of anti-racist and other social movements, different trans-coding strategies have been adopted (Hall 1997: 270). For example, previously, colonial photographs were used as scientific evidence of cultural difference and hierarchy. A critical analysis re-situates them as symbols of a ‘controlling knowledge’, domination and inequality. Thereby, critical approach dis-empowers the archive as a controlling mechanism.

Semiotics is the most popular approach among scholars in cultural studiesfor analysis of visual images. Semiotics was first defined by its founder, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) as ‘a science that studies the life of signs within a society’. A sign can be a word, a sound, or a visual image that stands for something else. Rather than simply locating the meaning, it decodes the ways through which the meaning is encoded. The meaning may remain hidden in deep structure of the text. Saussure divides linguistic signs into two components – the signifier (the sound, image, or word) and the signified, which is the concept the signifier represents, or its meaning. See an advertisement image in Figure 1 and its sign analysis in Figure 2.

Source: Desh(a literary magazine), 2nd October, 2006, Ananda Publishers Private Ltd., Kolkata.

	Figure 2.Sign analysis of the advertisement of Horlicks Lite
Sign	Advertisement of Horlicks Lite (a health drink meant for adults)
Signifiers	Four boxes contain images of an adult man with an athletic figure, practising different free
	hand exercises. In three boxes, a very slim woman does the same. In another box, there is a
	text message – ‘Take a small step first’ and in the last box there is the image of a bottle of
	Horlicks Lite.
Signified	Before taking plunge into the tough regime of daily exercise to maintain ones health as well
	as body-shape, adult men and women may just develop the habit of taking Horlicks Lite,
	which will give them the same result.

Signs are both denotative and connotative. Denotation is literal or direct signification. Connotation is implied or indirect signification. For example, in the advertisement of popular ayurvedic tonic Baidyanath Shankhapushpi – the Memory Enhancer, an image of Swami Vivekananda in his typical attire and posture is prominently displayed on the wall (see figure 3). Vivekananda’s picture denotes a sober decoration of the study room of an adolescent boy. But the connotation is very intriguing. It implies that this tonic will help the child to develop mental abilities comparable with Swami Vivekananda, a man of inner strength and quiet resolve (Chakraborty 2011).

Figure 3: Advertisement of Baidyanath Shankhapushpi

Source:   Graphiti, The Telegraph Magazine, 26th February 2006, Kolkata.

Signs are organized in a specific way in a text. Paradigmatic analysis involves revealing binary oppositions inherent in the signs. Such oppositions expose deep and hidden meanings in textual structures. The paradigmatic approach emerges from the structuralist work of Claude Levi Strauss (1966) and considers the patterns of oppositions that exist within the narrative and how they contribute to the development of the text (Hansen, Cottle, Negrine, Newbold 1998: 142). For example, photograph of the advertisement of Baidyanath Shankhapushpi was taken indoor, which was preferred to the opposition of outdoor. Strong and slim young bodies of men and women are preferred to the old and fat people in the ad of Horlicks Lite.

7. Forms of Visual Method

Visual method is often participatory in nature when the subjects are allowed to participate in creating visual data and/or analyzing it. Two commonly used methods are photo-elicitation interview and shooting scripts. Apart from these two, many other methods are also used by social scientists like participatory auto-driven photo and graphic elicitation in conjunction with focus groups, interviews or questionnaires, photo-essays, post cards and written responses to images selected by researchers etc. Video tour is another collaborative method that involves walking around a specific place with research participant/s4.

7.1. Participatory visual method

This is one possible variety of visual method, frequently used in social contexts. To make visual methods participatory, researcher has to allow research participants to get involved in the process of image- making. This method enables socially excluded individuals to claim recognition and an affirmative social presence, thereby empowering them for appropriate social action. It is an alternative to a prescriptive, ‘top down’ model of research where the researcher gives a structured format to the subjects, without allowing freedom to reflect on issues they find relevant. It offers the participants the opportunity to guide the researcher both in data collection and analysis. The decision for participation should be taken at the planning and design stage as it will affect the course of research and has time and budget implications. Visual methods can actually facilitate participation because it is easier to relate oneself with images than with abstract academic text. Participants should be given guidance and support by the researcher in the process of creating images. Freedom to choose visual medium to express themselves enhances their participation. In art elicitation projects, for example, the subjects are requested to participate in a discussion on an issue by producing artworks like sculptures, drawings and paintings, textiles, collage, or photos. Another method is asking them to create photo-diaries as homework, followed by intense self reflection. Researchers may organise local exhibitions of participants’ creations, or they may be invited to interact with journalists, or may even participate in academic writings and presentations. It may have long lasting impacts on the lives of participants as well as improving the quality of the research data (Richards 2011: 1-8).

Two methods commonly used by visual social scientists are photo-elicitation and the use of shooting scripts.

7.2. Photo elicitation interviews

Photo-elicitation is a method of using photographs to guide interviews and ask questions about social, cultural and behavioural realities (Harper 1987, Collier and Collier 1986, Curry and Clark 1977). It can be done in two ways:

i) A collection of photos showing scenes from subjects’ lives can be used to stimulate discussion among several individuals of similar social status or position. With the photographs, the interviews progress spontaneously, opening up subjects, in many cases, beyond anticipation of the researcher.

4 In Diss, UK, Pink asked local people involved in Cittaslow (Slow City) movement to take her on a video recorded tour of the town that would incorporate what they felt were the key characteristics of Diss, as a Cittaslow member-town (Pink 2008).

ii) Subjects may be requested to photograph their environments and comment on the photographs to see social definitions even more from the point of view of the subjects.

The photo-elicitation interview is a vehicle for getting at the point of view of the subjects, following Weber’s concept of verstehen. The use of images in interviews ‘brings the “subject” into the research process as an interpreter or even an active collaborator rather than as a passive object of study’ (Stanczak 2007:15). Images in conjunction with interviews can yield far richer data than word-only interviews. Indeed, often only a few prompts are needed when working with visual materials in interviews, to elicit highly detailed answers. Visual methods thereby destabilise assumptions of the researcher by focusing attention on what is important to the participant, including issues that may not have occurred to the researcher (Samuels 2007: 204). To draw on Collier’s metaphor, images may thus be used ‘as a “can opener” for deeper reflection and discussion (cited in Stanczak 2007, 15).

7.3. Shooting scripts

Shooting scripts are lists of research topics or questions which can be examined via photographic information (Rothstein 1989, Collier and Collier 1986). They provide a means by which photography can be grounded in a strategic and focused exploration of answers to particular theoretically-generated questions (Gold 1994). Shooting scripts work as guides for photographic and sociological seeing. There is a continuous process of constructing and reconstructing shooting scripts based on daily field experience. This, in turn, enhances seeing (Suchar 1997: 35). Following Suchar, one may begin with initial working hunches and theories about the subject matter. General understandings allow the researcher to frame general questions for which he will try to obtain photographic answers. At the same time drawing from researcher’s daily observations, he writes descriptive field notes. After processing films, a logging procedure is to be followed. A descriptive narrative is to be written for each significant frame identifying the way in which the frame is a response to the shooting script questions. Next, labels or names are attached to each descriptive narrative. This is referred to as open coding (Glaser 1978: 56-61; Strauss and Corbin 1990: 61). Researchers make the codes fit into the data, rather than forcing the data into codes. For Suchar, pre-determined topics of the shooting scripts do not limit the inductive process of discovery. There will be continuous process of interrogating images and examining field notes. One may also check his/her interpretations against other data, including observed subjects’ interpretations, to reduce script-based bias. With the codes in hand, the researcher will be able to compare images, which will generate new categories, concepts and theoretical understandings. This is called focused coding. Thus, there would be a combination of descriptive and analytic interpretations of visual data. The resulting analytic memos can also direct us to collect additional photographic data from the field. This is the embodiment of the “interrogatory stance” in visual documentary work (Suchar 1997: 40).

8. Limitations of visual method

A few limitations can be pointed out. Dependence on technology creates certain hurdles, interaction with participants opens up some challenges, subjectivity and specificity of images, though unavoidable, makes generalisability of the finding questionable.

8.1. Technology related problems

Practical issues like the costs and skills required for using certain technologies and storing visual materials are important shortcomings of this method. Another related problem is that computerised digital imaging allows scanning and reconstructing images in every possible way. Thus, technological expertise may enable somebody to deliberately distort reality. Furthermore, the camera may invoke rapport in one situation and shut it down in another (Stanczak 2007:13).

8.2. Problems related to the subjects

There is always a possibility of non-cooperation on the part of the subjects in the form of being overly conscious of the presence of the researcher/photographer leading to their inability to act naturally in their own social setting. They may not open up and often even misguide the researcher by striking artificial poses. In general, human beings do not like to see the mundane (Goffman1979)5. Ethical issues surrounding anonymity and informed consent become crucial in case of films and videos.

8.3. Problems due to the subjective nature of visuals

Positivist insistence on validity, reliability, objectivity can hardly be maintained in visual method. Like any other qualitative method, one may not be able to exactly measure reality using it. It contributes largely to understanding and sensitisation. Davis points out that photographs have often been used to support researchers’ strategic claims of authenticity and authority to speak as a person with first-hand experience of the situation, and as a source of privileged knowledge (Davis 1992: 208). While using visuals, researchers should be cautious about the underlying power dimensions.

8.4. Triangulation of methods to transcend the limitations

Chaplin, drawing on Burgin (1986), highlights that ‘photographs do not speak for themselves’; rather ‘it is words which give meaning to images’ (Chaplin 2004: 37). Sole dependence on it may result in a partial, and even distorted, understanding of the world. This is true about every method of social enquiry. Hence researcher may decide on triangulation of methods. For example, as discussed earlier, the photographs can well be used in conjunction with interviews to elicit testimony about the relationship that family members otherwise might not talk about easily. The essence of qualitative methodology lies in its flexibility. The researcher here acts as a bicolour, a ‘jack of all trades’ ready to use any strategy, method or data. Various administrative reports, and official statistical figures may also be used to corroborate the researcher’s findings through visuals. Each representation has its own narrative and agenda. Taken together these can be understood as a set of entangled pathways that inter-reference each other to create a collage-like representation of reality.

Self Check Exercise 3:

1. Question: What are the steps of visual research method?

Answer: Data collection/ generation and analysis of collected/ generated data are the two primary steps of visual research method. Data collection/generation is possible through: i) making visual representations; ii) examining pre-existing visual representations; and iii) collaborating with social actors in the production of visual representations.In the analysis stage the task of the researcher is to

5 While dealing with the depiction of gender in advertisements, Goffman finds that advertisements depict hyper-ritualised poses, where gender differences are standardised, exaggerated and simplified to a greater degree than in real life.

locate what has been represented by the images, how far those representations answer to his research questions, and then to triangulate this information to form an argument.Semiotics has been frequently usedfor analysis of visual images. Rather than simply locating the meaning, semiotics decodes the ways through which the meaning is encoded.

2. Question: What is participatory visual method?

Answer: In participatory visual method participants help the researcher both in data collection/generation and analysis. For example, in art elicitation projects, the subjects are requested to participate in a discussion on an issue by producing artworks like sculptures or photos. Another method is asking them to create photo-diaries as homework, followed by intense self-reflection. Researchers may organise local exhibitions of participants’ creations, or they may be invited to interact with journalists, or may even participate in academic writings and presentations.

3. Question: What is photo-elicitation interview?

Answer: Photo-elicitation is a method of using photographs to guide interviews. It can be done in two ways: i) a collection of photos showing scenes from subjects’ lives can be used to stimulate discussion among several individuals of similar social status or position; ii) subjects may be requested to photograph their environments and comment on the photographs to see social definitions from the point of view of the subjects. Images in conjunction with interviews can yield far richer data than word-only interviews.

9. Conclusion

In today’s world there has been an explosion of signs and images throughout the social realm. Naturally, sociologists are studying existing visuals as well as creating visuals to understand interaction in a controlled or in a natural setting. Significance of visual method lies in the fact that apart from being integral to a course on social research methodology, it would be an indispensable tool for studying gender, race and ethnicity, inequality, work and occupations, health and medicines, urban communities, etc. which are easily susceptible to visual treatment and also are topical areas where lots of relevant visual material has already been compiled. Visual research methods are not purely visual. It is necessary to make meaningful links between different research experiences and materials — visual, verbal, as well as written to produce a total message. I agree with Ray that ‘pains of hunger, tears for a lost child, anxiety about shelter, awe at other’s prosperity are more revealing than statistics on BPL, child mortality, development induced displacement and gini coefficient’(Ray 2004: 17). Making sense of social reality is often more urgent than measuring the same and visual method significantly contributes to make sense of human emotions and social actions.

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