Table of Contents

Part I. Remodelling Visual Social Science: 1. Prologue and outline: (re)framing visual social science?; 2. An integrated framework for conducting and assessing visual social research; Part II. The Visual Researcher as Collector and Interpreter: 3. Researching 'found' or 'pre-existing' visual materials; 4. A visual and multimodal model for analyzing online environments; Part III. The Visual Researcher as Producer, Facilitator and Communicator: 5. The mimetic mode: from exploratory to systematic visual data production; 6. Visual elicitation techniques, respondent-generated image production and 'participatory' visual activism; 7. The 'visual essay' as a scholarly format: art meets (social) science?; 8. Social scientific filmmaking and multimedia production: key features and debates; Part IV. Applications/Case Studies: 9. Family photography as a social practice: from the analogue to the digital networked world; 10. A visual study of corporate culture: the workplace as metaphor; 11. Health communication in South Africa: a visual study of posters, billboards and grassroots media; Part V. Visual Research in a Wider Perspective: 12. Ethics of visual research in the offline and online world; 13. A meta-disciplinary framework for producing and assessing visual representations; 14. Advancing visual research: pending issues and future directions.

Promotional Information

A guide to the methods and techniques used to visually study and communicate culture and society.

About the Author

Luc Pauwels is Professor of Visual Research Methods in the Faculty of Social Sciences (Department of Communication Studies) and Director of the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) at the University of Antwerp.

Reviews

'A remarkably readable, yet highly scholarly exposure of approaches to research that open up the riches of contemporary and historical sources of visual culture. This book will be of great value to anyone involved at the cutting edge of carrying out visual research. They will find in it practical guidance, critical scholarship and encouragement to go further into this exciting field of study.' Catherine Burke, University of Cambridge

'Reframing Visual Social Science offers a fresh, powerful and theoretically sophisticated perspective on the visual turn that's been reshaping social research for the past fifteen years. Focusing on the seam between visual evidence and visual representation, Pauwels examines a cluster of contrasting points of view that can discourage or distort visual approaches to the social sciences. Rather than pushing these contradictions aside, however, Pauwels embraces them as opportunities for systematic analysis. Through a combination of case studies and theoretical essays, he articulates that analysis as a comprehensive framework for understanding materials and research practices that are all too often treated sui generis - including photographic field work, ethnographic film, the analysis of found photographs, participatory media projects, and image-rich research reporting. The result is a path-breaking book that links existing treatments of visual social research with new possibilities and perspectives and has a great deal to offer both beginning and mature scholars.' Jon Wagner, Professor Emeritus, School of Education, University of California, Davis