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.
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