Visual Data and Visual Methods in Social Sciences
Lecturers: Katharina Lobinger & Patricia Prieto-Blanco
Modality: In presence
Week 2: 17-21 August 2026
Workshop contents and objectives
The prevalence of visual elements in our daily lives, such as visual communication in digital and social media, advertising, corporate communication, and video games, underscores the importance for social scientists to handle and analyze visual data proficiently and adequately. Additionally, the widespread availability of user-friendly visual technologies, such as smartphones that enable ubiquitous photography and computing, present promising opportunities for using visual methods when conducting research on social phenomena. In other words, the visual approaches in the social sciences are not only concerned with the analysis of visual data and of visual material. Visuals can also be fruitfully used for research purposes. Both aspects will be covered in this workshop.
The workshop provides an introduction to visual data and visual methods and illustrates the use of different kinds of visuals in the research process, discussing: A) the collection and production of various forms of visual data, B) the analysis and interpretation of visual data and C) the use of visual methods in research designs. While both quantitative and qualitative approaches will be discussed, emphasis will be placed on qualitative visual research. Throughout the workshop, we will also focus on the ethical challenges associated with visual research, including the renewed attention to reflexivity, positionality, and embodiment.
Workshop design
The objective of the course is to encourage critical reflection on the appropriate application of various forms of visual research. The instructional approach integrates both theoretical insights and practical experimentation, offering students the chance to engage in hands-on exploration of various visual methods, including visual or photo elicitation, visual essay, visual ethnography, visual card sorting, and visual analysis. Sessions will also cover theoretical and practical engagement with ethical issues in visual and creative research. Students will be invited to produce and work with their own visual data before and during the workshop session.
Detailed lecture plan (daily schedule)
| Day 1 |
Introduction
|
| Day 2 |
Ethnographic approaches: observing and capturing
|
| Day 3 |
Participatory approaches and “creative” visual techniques: Photo/ Video elicitation and card sorting
|
| Day 4 |
Analyzing visual data: Quantitative and qualitative visual content analysis
|
| Day 5 |
Video analysis & Conclusion
|
This is a tentative schedule. Minor changes might occur, depending on the learning pace of the students and any unforeseen contingencies.
Class materials
Prior to the workshop, students will be asked to perform small visual exercises. The instructions and all the relevant reading materials will be circulated before the start of the workshop.
Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with general notions of qualitative and quantitative research and be aware of their different orientations. Students should be interested in research that involving, among others, visual data and visual methods. The indicated readings serve as further references but are not mandatory preparatory readings.
Recommended readings or preliminary material
- Awan, F., & Gauntlett, D. (2011). Creative and visual methods in audience research. V. Nightingale (Ed.), The Handbook of Media Audiences (pp. 360-379). Wiley-Blackwell.
- Azoulay, A. (2005). The ethic of the spectator. Afterimage, 33(2), 38–44. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2005.33.2.38
- Becker, H. S. (1995). Visual sociology, documentary photography, and photojournalism: It’s (almost) all a matter of context. Visual Sociology, 10(1–2), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725869508583745
- Gencel Bek, M. (2022). Exploring (migrant) women’s lives and stories through photographs. Moment Journal, 9(1), 251–269. https://doi.org/10.17572/mj2022.1.251269
- Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J. & Luff, P. (2010) Video in qualitative research. Analysing social interaction in everyday life. Sage.
- Knoblauch, H. (2006) Video analysis: Methodology and methods. Qualitative audiovisual data analysis in sociology. Lang
- Lobinger, K., & Brantner, C. (2020). Picture-sorting techniques. Card sorting and Q-sort as alternative and complementary approaches in visual social research. In L. Pauwels & D. Mannay (Eds.), The Sage handbook of visual research methods (2nd ed). Sage.
- Mengis, J., Nicolini, D., & Gorli, M. (2018). The video production of space: How different recording practices matter. Organizational Research Methods, 21(2), 288–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428116669819
- Pearce, W., Özkula, S. M., Greene, A. K., Teeling, L., Bansard, J. S., Omena, J. J., & Rabello, E. T. (2020). Visual cross-platform analysis: Digital methods to research social media images. Information, Communication & Society, 23(2), 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1486871
- Pauwels, L., & Mannay, D. (Eds.) (2020). The Sage handbook of visual research methods. Sage
- Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography. Sage.
- Prieto-Blanco, P. (2021). Afterword: Visual research in migration. (In)visibilities, participation, discourses. In K. Nikielska-Sekula & A. Desille (Eds.), Visual Methodology in Migration Studies (pp. 327–343). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67608-7_18
- Prieto-Blanco, P. (2022). Visual Sociology (Guest Edition), The Social Breakdown [podcast]. March 30th 2022. Available at https://www.thesocialbreakdown.com/2022/03/30/soc513-visual-sociology-guest-edition/
- Rose, G. (2023). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage
Katharina Lobinger
Institute of Digital Technologies for Communication, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
Katharina Lobinger is Associate Professor at the Institute of Digital Technologies for Communication (ITDxC) at Università della Svizzera italiana. She is a visual communication scholar. Her main research interests include networked photography, online communication, digital (visual) culture, ethics for the digital age, and creative and visual research methods. In particular, she is working with interdisciplinary and mixed method approaches of visual content analysis, visual card sorting procedures (such as Q-sort), network drawings and visual elicitation. Katharina Lobinger is president of the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SGKM, SACMR) and has been vice-chair and then chair of the visual communication division of the German Communication Association (2013 to 2019).
She is editor of the “Handbuch Visuelle Kommunikationsforschung” [Handbook of Visual Communication Research].
Patricia Prieto-Blanco
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Patricia Prieto-Blanco is a Lecturer in Digital Media Practice at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (LICA), University of Lancaster (UK). She has researched visual practices in the context of family photography, migration, activism and online gender-based violence. She is particularly interested in visual methods and on feminist, ethnographically informed approaches to research. Her work is both theoretical and practice-based (photography, collage, videoart) and has been exhibited internationally most recently at telephonegame.art. At the moment she is co-writing a book about regimes of visuality and visibility in times of gender backlash, techno-patriarchy and automation (Emerald); and co-editing a volume on the work of Amy Sherman Palladino (Bloomsbury) as well a special issue of Big Data & Society on feminist approaches to data. Furthermore, Patricia is a co-editor of the book series Transformations (Routledge) and co-chair of the ECREA Section Visual Cultures.