Visual methods in the context of multimodality

Bella Dicks, University of Cardiff

This session will examine how visual and multimedia data employ particular semiotic ‘modes’, and as a result afford distinctive kinds of meaning. I will be talking both about data in the field and about data in field records . I will discuss how visual data in the field can be related to data employing other modes; e.g. sound, writing, speech, texture, and so forth. All field data have to be recorded for research purposes using dedicated recording media and this in turn has implications for multimodality. Still images, for example, communicate in different ways to moving images, and both are distinct from recorded sound.

Today’s researchers increasingly want to utilise such different media in conjunction with each other, not least because the technologies for doing so are now readily available and affordable. Yet it is not always easy or straightforward to exploit data successfully in different media forms. We will think about how as researchers we can succeed in combining different media on the computer screen, both for analysis and for representational purposes, in a way that can make best use of the various modes they employ.

Using visual methods to understand other people's experience

Sarah Pink, University of Loughborough

This presentation will concentrate on the use of visual research methods in understanding and communicating about other people's multi-sensory embodied experiences. I will suggest that by combining visual and other methods of research and representation we can create a blend of theoretical and experiential text that communicates about other people's realities more effectively than printed or filmic texts might.

Social life under the microscope

Monika Buscher, University of Lancaster

Video Analysis, Remote Collaboration and e-Social Science: The development of MiMeG

Jon Hindmarsh and Mike Fraser

One of the benefits of video-based research in the social sciences is that it can provide unprecedented opportunities to share, discuss and collaboratively analyse raw qualitative data with colleagues. Indeed there are numerous joint projects emerging across the UK , Europe and beyond that are utilising these distinct affordances of video data. One of the ways in which these materials are analysed is through group data analysis sessions (or ‘data sessions’) and the practicalities of working in national and international projects has lead to calls for technological solutions to support distributed data sessions – data sessions involving groups of remote participants. Existing software, tools and technologies are limited in this regard. However this presentation will outline efforts as part of the ESRC’s e-Social Science programme to develop innovative solutions to some of the problems of remote working with video data. It will outline our progress through a programme of work that encompasses the collection of requirements for new technologies, to the development of demonstrator technologies and the trial of these technologies with social scientists working with video materials. The presentation will include a brief demonstration of the technology and an evaluation of the experiences of social scientists working with it as part of their everyday work. It will also reflect on the challenges inherent in attempting to support, and lessons to be learned about, social interaction over video data.

Issues in visual methods

David Zeitlyn and Michael Fischer, University of Kent