350MC: Research as Critical Analysis
Research, analyzing concepts and making an argument -
structuring a presentation,
REMEMBER our project outline from the last session
Introduction:
Topic - WHAT IS MY PROJECT ABOUT
Issues - WHY IS IT IMPORTANT / “SO WHAT?”
Organisation - HOW
The Specific topic of investigation
Produce a clear one-sentence definition of the project
Key Ideas and Framework
Identify the key ideas that underpin your project - what will
you read to help you define these concepts
Identify the theoretical framework you will adopt - whose
perspective on your topic have you been influenced by / do you
value or trust
Methods and their Rationale
Results /Data - Evaluation of Methods,
Evaluation of Results/Data
Conclusion
This frame is something that can help you organise what you do
throughout the project – it should form the basis of the shape of
your final presentation; but also you can use it as you go. One
question it helps you with is when/how to ask what kinds of
questions – how to analyse/interpret the world you are
investigating.
Here (in red) are some of the spaces that critical analysis are
important to how you conduct your research and (in Green) some of
the ways you can employ the ideas below
Introduction:
Topic - WHAT IS MY PROJECT ABOUT
Basic/common-sense or insider (professional) understanding of
the situation or object/s - challenge and question how that common
sense /accepted view came about
Issues - WHY IS IT IMPORTANT / “SO WHAT?”
Organisation - HOW
The Specific topic of investigation
Produce a clear one-sentence definition of the project
Key Ideas and Framework
Identify the key ideas that underpin your project - what will
you read to help you define these concepts – how will you make them
your own
Identify the theoretical framework you will adopt - decide whose
perspective on your topic have you been influenced by / do you
value or trust
Methods and their Rationale
Results /Data - Evaluation of Methods,
Evaluation of Results/Data
How will you interpret the material you are investigating – You
cannot accept even the evidence you find for yourself as
self-evident – even when people directly answer your questions.
These form evidence that needs to be interpreted – see the comments
below about culture as a system of meanings – this applies to what
you discover and what you choose to interpret.
Conclusion
SOME EXAMPLES
Pete Brook In Conversation With Stephen Mayes – key concepts
Photography is less about document or evidence and more about
community and experience … and that’s not a bad thing.
We tend to understand technologies in terms of what went
before – famously we referred to the automobile, at first, as the
horseless carriage. We are going through this same process with the
cellphone. We keep trying to contextualize it in the old medium and
with old terms. A print exhibition brings the new image making back
to the old methods of presentation.
Also, note how a lot of the visual filters are about nostalgia
for the image. We’re embracing the cellphone, but desperately
trying to link it to what we know, our histories and what is
familiar.
Meanwhile, the object itself is taking us into completely
different areas. The unselfconsciousness of it is key. While
everyone is looking at aspects, the Instagram filter, whatever it
might be, actually something bigger is happening behind our
backs
Wired: And what is that “something bigger”?
Mayes: The way we relate to imagery is changing. Our new
relationship is less about witness, evidence and document and much
more about experience, sharing, moment and streaming. The cellphone
is a harbinger for something hugely significant.
For example, the Japanese Tsunami was essentially documented by
people experiencing the Tsunami. You had these incredibly graphic
images of water coming up people’s leg as they scrambled to higher
ground and you were in there in an extraordinary way. I haven’t
seen those pictures reproduced much since. Since then, I have seen
the professional photojournalists’ studies and interpretations.
I’ve seen analysis.
Caroline Bassette “Silence, Delirium and Lies” - challenging
common sense
The architecture of monopoly social Media = Exploitation of our
time/attention/consciousness/ lives via the injunction to make more
noise
WHY?
Real life Concepts: social media make conversations amongst
friends easier and enable users to find friends
Analytical concepts: Conversation + Ease / Free-ness Social
Media => conversation as traffic => Metadata
Conversation Interface
Conversation Interface
Conversation Naturalising Interface Code interface Interface
Conversation
Data Conversation Interface
Analytics Conversation Interface
Sentiments Preferences consumption patterns
Third Parties commodity
What kinds of Silence
What kinds of Satire
What kinds of metaphor
What kinds of poetic language
What kinds of Glossolalia
How to mark out the space
#tag “ _____ “ how deployed? how marked out? WHY?
ANALAYTICAL CIRCUITS
START/READ CONCEPT Other’s definition Exemplification
Contextualisation
CONCEPT ’ shared definition shared Exemplification
Re-Contextualisation
CONCEPT ’’ your re-definition your Exemplification’
Interpretation
Re-articulation (doing your work/writing Analysis
– as researched, reflective process/practice ‘FINISH’
Independence Self-critique
Reflective ArticulationRe-appropriation Shared Critique
Reflection Appropriation Critique
The colours of the key terms are intended to indicate phases –
these might imply sessions or sections of the module – or the use
of a key text– definition; interpretation; working with ideas;
working on producing text or artefacts.
The colours of the arrows indicate 1st time through – is text
(tutors) showing/leading you through author’s examples;
2nd time through – you thinking through authors’ example in your
own terms – referred to your examples
3rd time working through your own materials/examples ; leads to
self-critical reflective practice and your own work.
OTHER EXAMPLES
CULTURE as a series of SIGNS
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913
· A sign is anything that produces meaning(s)
· Signs refer to ‘things’ (referents): they represent, depict,
propose as real, make statements, stand for…
· Signifier (mental impression) and signified (concept):
signification
· Signifier and signified are inseparable and simultaneous
· ‘Signifier’ and ‘signified’ are abstract mental entities we
use as analys
The link between signifier and signified is arbitrary
(conventionality; polysemy, homophony)
· Signs acquire meaning as element of a system of
differences;
· ‘Vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ relations between signs (value -
reference; meaning of the sign in language - exchange);
· Codes, subsidiary codes and genres: codes provide positions
from which it is possible to speak, or mean for addressers and
addressees (social/shared positions)
CULTURE as a series of REPRESENTATIONS
Representations:
· Are processes by which meanings appear to stand for or depict
another object or practice in the 'real' world?
· Do not simply reflect in symbolic form 'things' that exist in
an independent object world, rather, they are constitutive of the
meaning of the thing that they purport to stand in for.
· Do not involve correspondence between signs and objects but
create the 'representational effect' of realism.
· Are meaningful as a consequence of being a system of
differential signs that generate significance through
difference.
· Meaning is relational and unstable rather than referential and
fixed.
· Endows material objects (things, signs, images) and social
practices with meaning and intelligibility and in doing so
construct the fields of meaning that are constitute our
cultures.
TRUTH (intended meaning) as something PRODUCED
· Each sign has a range of signifieds - concepts that form a
complex of meanings around it.
· The denotations of a sign are the most stable and apparently
verifiable of its meanings (truth-effects);
· Denotation is a process of naturalization: transforming
connotations into denotations through paradigmatic and syntagmatic
processes and strategies;
· Connotations are the more metaphorical or ideological aspect
of meaning
· Denaturalisation/cultural analysis: is the process of breaking
through the façade of naturalness (myth), make visible the social
constructed-ness of meaning through analysis
MYTHOLOGY - Analysing ideological REPRESENTATIONS
For Roland Barthes: Myth is a type of speech;
· Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been
worked on;
· Myth is a second-order semiological system (metalanguage):
that which is a sign in the first system, becomes a mere signifier
in the second;
· “MYTH” is a type of speech defined by its intention much more
than by any literal sense (its not about myths as fairy stories or
folk tales;
· MYTHical signification is never arbitrary, it is always
motivated, but unavoidably contains some analogy; myth hides
nothing - it distorts;
· MYTH transforms history (social realities and divisions and
peoples values) into nature;
· MYTH is read as a factual system, but is actually semiological
system (one in which meanings are MADE not found or simply
read;
· MYTH is depoliticised speech – it is writing speaking or
images which attempt to present their referents as self –evident,
common-sense or natural;
· The function of MYTH is to empty reality: things appear to
mean something by themselves.
DIFFERENT EXAMPLES
YOUR NOTES ON THESE IMAGES
What can I see?
Photo 1 – two women and a baby, a green and pink blanket,
different ethnicities, the company’s logo, contrasting
appearances
Photo 2 – people in a street looking up at something, black and
white image, inside a city
What do I know?
Photo 1 – this company is known for advertising campaigns that
focus the audience’s attention on the world
Photo 2 – photographs similar to this were taken during the 9/11
attacks in New York
Why/how do I know that?
Photo 1 – because we discussed the ideas behind the company’s
campaigns
Photo 2 – because photos like this were shared on social media
websites
What do they want me to see?
Photo 1 – the company sell products for every different kind of
person including different ethnicities and ages
Photo 2 – the street view from the 9/11 attacks and how a
traumatic event can unite so many different people