Questions from Tufte readings

Questions from Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Chapter 4—Data-Ink and Graphical Redesign

1.     How, if at all, can the discussion of bilateral symmetry of data and its relation to redundancy be applied to a non-symmetrical object (e.g., a carved jack-o-lantern)? (97)

Chapter 5—Cartjunk: Vibrations, Grids, and Ducks

2.     The reading discusses moiré vibration as “bad art” and “bad data graphics.” Is there any way that the moiré vibration could be used to strengthen a chart or an image or is it a hindrance only? (108)

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

Chapter 2—Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions

3.     If a good method is partially defined by a timely problem, how is the passage of time within the project a poor explanatory variable? (29)

4.     How did Snow’s work move this far, and be validated, if it embodies such large uncertainty in the evidence (the removal of the handle of the pump)? (33)

Mini-response on Rose, Visual Methodologies

A mini-response focusing on two chapters of Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials

Chapter 5: “Content Analysis: Counting What You (Think You) See”

Rose writes that content analysis is just one option that can be used when working with mass media images (82). For a MAPC project, students might use content analysis to study the safety documents from the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA). Similarly to the example in the text, this project would allow students to use content analysis as a way of dealing with a large, complex dataset (85). Students might choose to analyze representations of gore or fatalities in safety products (e.g., images) from OSHA and then determine whether the images were too scary for public view. This comprehensive project would be “based on counting the frequency of certain visual elements in a clearly defined sample of images, and then analyzing those frequencies” (Rose 87). This project aligns with the two aspects Krippendorf puts forth in his definition of content analysis: replicability and validity. According to Rose, “content analysis offers techniques for handling large numbers of images with some degree of consistency;” thus, this OSHA example would provide current students with “a way of understanding the symbolic qualities of texts,” and future students with a project that can and should be replicated years later with another cohort of students, allowing for comparison to be made across time (85, 97). Perhaps this OSHA example might call for either random or stratified sampling; the coding strategy, as described in the text, would need to be exhaustive, exclusive, and enlightening (91). By using the rules of content analysis, student researchers would not obviate nor would they insert subjective opinions in their sampling procedure and analysis of the images.

Chapter 10: “To Audience Studies and Beyond: Ethnographies of Television Audiences, Fans, and Users”

Audience, as it is put forth in Rose’s text, involves active participation by the people, “as they decode the significance of the mass media that they encounter in their everyday lives” (269). Rose brings to light the broad array of audiencing and writes about the different approaches to studying its components. MAPC students might generate a project with particular focus on researching audience studies as it fits with ethnography. Rose cites Marie Gillespie’s definition of ethnography and writes that it is ‘a window onto ‘audiences in their full sociological complexity’’” (279). For a project, MAPC students could conduct an ethnographic study of audiencing as it relates to children and their television-viewing behaviors. Specifically, students might pose a question like the following: What are the effects of a media literacy education after-school curriculum on the requests for commercial toys and games from middle-class children aged five to 10? Although grounded in media effects research, this study would require careful observation and an ethnographic component on behalf of the student experimenters. MAPC students might want to evaluate if teaching children about media literacy would make them react in critical ways to televised commercials before wanting and requesting every toy and game they see advertised. By using ethnographic components, students would conduct interviews and receive feedback. MAPC students would have readily available to them the considerations, as outlined in the text: access to the audience (would require permission from the parents of the children), observation techniques, data collection, and data analysis. By interviewing children, recording observations, and collecting and analyzing this data, MAPC students would produce a deliverable of which would highlight the viewing practices as they relate to the specific topic, present the finding(s), and perhaps propose a solution(s) for change.

Rose, Visual Methodologies Questions

For this week's response, we were to generate a list of questions from the required readings. Questions from Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials are found below.

Questions from Chapter 1, "Researching with Visual Materials: A Brief Survey"

1.     Rose mentions the “tourist gaze” as coined by John Urry. To what extent, if at all, is this gaze derived from/related to the “male gaze” as we read in Sturken and Cartwright’s, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture?

2.     Within section 1.2, “Understanding the Social Effects of Visual Materials,” Rose writes: “…writers on visual culture, among others, are concerned not only with how images look, but how they are looked at.” How might this statement relate to McCombs and Shaw’s (and later Cohen’s) media effects theory of agenda setting?

Questions from Chapter 2, "Towards a Critical Visual Methodology"

1.     In what ways does the second aspect of the social modality of audiencing involve conducting an audience analysis like one would for a speech, presentation, etc.?

2.     Convergence, in the sense it is mentioned, is more of an umbrella term. Might we further break down this term and discuss its highlighted importance with visual images?

3.     “Appreciation,” in regard to a viewer’s opinion of art, seems loosely defined. Might we talk more about this term and how it can be applied to a viewer’s subjective thoughts?

Questions from Chapter 12, "Ethics and Visual Research Methodologies"

1.     Rose suggests that “a typical consent form would include a summary of the research project, and various boxes for participants to tick, agreeing to a range of different activities and to a range of things that you may want to do with the data…” What, if any, are the downsides of providing participants with these various boxes for them to tick?

2.     What might some of the drawbacks be in allowing for flexibility of the “collaborative relationship” that Rose mentions can exist between the researcher and the researched?

Sources:

Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. London: Sage, 2012.