Evaluation

Evaluation

The visual methodology worked well from the visual image-based research. It has been a great learning curve creating a blog as I have had no previous experience and limited knowledge about blogs prior to this and in addition I have had no experience with visual image –based research. As a result of this It was a bit of a challenge at first setting up a blog and getting used to the site. It also took a while to decide which subject to explore as I had to take into consideration any ethnical issues that may arise within the image-based research and consider the sampling condition that will be used within the image-based research.

By taking these two aspects into consideration I had to choose a topic to investigate that was appropriate and less likely to be disturbed by external factors. As the topic I chose to investigate did not involve any participants there was no major ethical issues to consider which made my research straight forward to conduct (Prosser 1998). It is important to consider the knowledge of methodology and theory, according to Prosser 'we will focus attention on methodology and the ways in which theory informs and legitimates practice,’ thus the critical link is being made here between knowledge of theory and practice (Prosser 1999: 117).

The two aspects of reliability and validity also had to be considered within this image-based research. As validity usually refers to the questions whether the ethnographer has accurately stated what they have perceived from the photograph. I had to consider whether my topic would be appropriate to conducted as the element investigates whether the research has truly measured what it intended to measure (Prosser 1998: 28). I also had to consider whether my topic was reliable to conduct as an outcome of my image-based research would my data yield the same results if the study was replicated using similar methods (Simco 1997).

It was rather difficult using a qualitative method implementing a grounded theory as I had to explore if the grounded theory was relevant to apply to this image-based research. In order to implement a grounded theory using a qualitative method I had to examine and understand the background information on cultural industry and make sure the data collection of photographs of tourist cultural attractions was fairly distributed within the United Kingdom. I had to make sure the theory was accurate as the theory merges the comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom. I had to make sure it was applied correctly as Glaser and Strauss (1967) suggest prior knowledge of the researcher can possibly influence the outcome of the study (Dey 1999).

I have learned that there is a lot more to a photograph than just taking one, for instance, photographers apply compositional techniques to their photographs to make them look more effective and also highlight the important objects within the photograph. I have also learned that visual research methods use images produced by society and of society to better comprehend the social situation (Dunlop 2010: 210). In relation to visual sociology there is a lot more to a photograph as Harper suggestions that “images allow us to make statements which cannot be made by words, and the world we see is saturated with sociological meaning” (Prosser 1998:38).

As Howard Becker (1974) discovered that both sociology and photography emerged around the same time and both explored society. Becker suggests both terms should reunite to work together in order to discover different aspects of social life. This image-based research enabled me to use photography and sociology in order to investigate whether cultural industry exists within cultural tourist attractions within the United States and the United Kingdom. Elizabeth Chaplin suggests photographs and captions can be treated as factual information, which demonstrates how significant image-based research can be (Chaplin 2002: 26).

According to Howard S. Becker “Photographs by their nature are ambiguous.” (Prosser 1998: 84). I have learned it is important for photographs captured by a visual sociologist to create the importance and legitimization of a specific photograph in the response that it generates to those who actually perceive it rather than attaching a specific catch-all term to it. I have considered this issue whilst conducting my image-based research (Prosser 1998).

The pictures were relatively straight forward to analyse as the grounded theory provided a generality of culture industry. The generality of culture industry and the information examined from journals and booked helped significantly in analysing the photographs as it was very easy to identify whilst examining a photograph whether it is a hereditary sighting or based upon cultural industry such as entertainment.

Despite of the difficult things to implement such as the grounded theory using a qualitative research method, the easiest part of the images-based research was taking the photographs and deciding which aspect to explore after investigating the ethical issues and sampling consideration that may arise. The visual-image based research contained both theoretical and practical aspects, from setting up a blog it made the research more enjoyable.

In conclusion the visual methodology worked well from the image-based research. The visual-image based research has been very interesting and it has also been a great learning curve because it has enabled me to learn a new skill of capturing photographs and applying techniques to these photographs to make them more effective for instance applying  the rule of thirds to a photograph. This image-based research has also demonstrated that photographs go beyond applying compositional techniques for instance sociological meaning can be applied to a photograph, as Harper suggestions that “images allow us to make statements which cannot be made by words, and the world we see is saturated with sociological meaning.” 

References

Prosser, J. (1998) Image-based research: a sourcebook for qualitative researchers. London: Falmer Press

Simco, N., Warin, J. (1997) ‘Validity in image-based research: an elaborated Illustration of the issues.’ British Educational Research Journal 23, (5) 661-672

Dunlop, S., Richter, P. (2010) "Visual methods." Religion and youth. Farnham: Ashgate

Dey, L. (1999) Grounding grounded theory guidelines for qualitative Inquiry.  San Diego: Academic Press

Chaplin, E. (2002)’Everyday cultures working papers’. Journal of Photographs in Social Research 2, (2) 1-30