Critical Media Methods

Seminar 5

Today’s Seminar

•Review of the lecture

•Activity: Taking ‘Good’ Photos

•Task briefCri

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Review of the Lecture

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Review of Lecture• Visual methods are interested in

sensorial, emotive and experiential data

• Important. But very difficult to capture!

• ‘Visual’ is also aspect of mediated culture. Visual methods have good link with M&C.C

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Review of Lecture

• History of visual methods and shift from cultural object to research:

• Early C20th = photo-journalism

• Mid C20th = ethnography

• 1980s = method in own right

• Now = digital era

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Review of Lecture

• Photo-documentation, ‘shooting to a script’

• Photo-elicitation, photo + interview

• Photo-essay, researcher’s story

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Review of Lecture

•Questions?

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Activity 1: Taking Good

Photos

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Visual Methodshttps://vimeo.com/31203628

1Find someone who wants to share

2Hook – listen, find emotional point

3Clear narrative

4Lots of them!

5Simple.

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Visual MethodsIndividually go back to one of the photographs you discussed in the lecture.

•What makes this a ‘good’ photo? Is it technique or meaning?

•Does the photo have a story?Cri

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Visual MethodsText your chosen photos to each other.

Using one of your computers, create a story out of all of your images that shows the links between them (this can be a new story, think here about Prop, Todorov etc).

Present your new stories back to the class – what meanings does it have?C

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For Next Week

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Weekly Task

• Using either photo-documentation, photo-elicitation or photo-essay techniques, explore an area of your own lives where you consider yourselves, as a group, to be an active or devoted audience.

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Weekly Task• To do this, you will need to plan your

approach:

• Will you interview each other about your photos?

• Will you find already available photos, or produce some yourselves?

• Will you only use photographs, or will you add maps, drawings etc?

• How will you present your ideas?

• What technologies will you use – mobile phones, webcams, specialist cameras?C

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Weekly Task

• In your behind the scenes video, you will need to show the processes that went into conducting your visual methods, as well as the ideas and theories behind them. Justify your approach in relation to the idea of ‘active audience’.

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Weekly Task

• As you create your behind the scenes video of using this method, you also need to think/talk about:

• - the theory, concepts and ideas behind the method;- how you have applied the method;- what you found;- what you learnt/experienced.

• Use this week’s reading to help identify important points for discussion.

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Tutorial Times• You will be handed a piece of paper

with your tutorial time for next week.

•All tutorials will take place in ET130.

• Please make sure that you all arrive together as a group and on time.C

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•Questions?

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