Image Analysis in fieldbased research

1
Image Analysis (in field-based research)

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

2
Outline

• The status of images in society
• Compositional interpretation some vocabulary
• Content Analysis of Images
• Semiotic Analysis

3
A New Era of Digitally Doctored Images
Source http//www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening
-standard-crowd.htm
4
Source http//www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening
-standard-crowd.htm
5
Compositional Interpretation

• content what is the image of? Religious,
  historical, literary themes/events
• color hue, saturation, value/brightness
• spatial organization perspective, point of
  view, eye level
• light source

6
Compositional Interpretation

• Moving Images
• Screen ratio
• Screen frame open or closed
• Screen plane
• Shot distance
• Focus
• Angle

7
Compositional Interpretation

• Moving Images
• Revolving Pan, Tilt
• Tracking, Crane
• Zoom
• Editing
• Continuity cut (classic Hollywood)
• Jump cuts (MTV)

8
Content Analysis of Images

• Sample documents (can even do a random sample)
• Divide documents into units
• syntactical vs. semantic elements
• Articles, words, sentences, themes, propositions
• Construct a coding frame and assign codes to
  units
• Calculate frequencies

9
Content Analysis of Images

• Reading National
• Geographic
• (Lutz and Collins 1993)

10
Content Analysis of Images

• How photos were coded
• World location
• Unit of article organization (region,
  nation-state, ethnic group, other)
• Camera gaze of person photographed
• Westerners in photo
• Skin color
• Dress style (western or local)
• Male nudity
• Female nudity
• Technological type present (simple handmade
  tools, machinery)

11
Shortcomings of Content Analysis

• What exactly do frequencies mean?
• Does more often mean more important? What about
  important omissions?
• Good coding schemes need extensive piloting,
  trial and error
• Binary nature of codes

12
Semiology/Semiotics

• Language is relational not referential
• Signifier, signified, referent
• Furthermore icon, index, symbol
• Studying how signs come together and work as
  codes
• Denotation (a baby, base-level meaning) vs.
  connotation (higher-level meaning, i.e. innocence)

13
Semiology/Semiotics

• Two main research issues
• Analysis of signs in systems of relations through
  which they get their meaning
• How a particular sign system divides up the world
  (and what are the social implications)

14
Semiotics Method

• denotational phase, list all elements in the
  image and any accompanying text
• ask what does each element connote?
• how do the elements relate to each other?
• what cultural knowledges are required in order to
  read the material? (connection to wider systems
  of meaning)

source Bauer and Gaskell
15
Semiotics Example
16
(No Transcript)
17
Shortcomings of Semiotics

• Implicit presumption about readers as cultural
  dupes
• Elaborate, perhaps overly complex terminology
• Lack of concern with surrounding social practices
  but see social semiotics

18
Summary

• Content analysis on large quantities of
  text/imagery (news media)
• Semiotics on persuasive/rhetorical texts/imagery
  (advertisements)
• Semiotics requires substantial cultural knowledge
• How do we handle what is notably absent,
  concealed?

19
Further Reading

• Visual Methodologies, Gillian Rose highly
  recommended