Image Analysis

From the reading I glean that there are both benefits and drawbacks to studying images for the purposes of research.  Knights explains that analyzing images help researches notice significant aspects that do not show up in printed news paper or text.  Visual images can help researchers uncover complex understanding of social phenomena.

One of the main drawbacks is that image based research can be difficult because "images are information rich and difficult to analyse in any systematic way" (2002, p. 102).  Selecting an image set to include in research is problematic because it needs to be justified in an objective and systematic way.  Furthermore, developing a methodology for sifting through multiple images is difficult to develop and administer.  It is also a very new form of analysis in social science and there is little in terms of publish methodology guidelines to guide researchers in undertaking valid image analysis.

A methodology that Knight mentions that researchers should try to uncover the understandings of images of participants who are the intended audience for the image.  But there are layers of convolution in this suggestion because how is the researcher supposed to know who the intended audience is for the image, or what if the image is a historical artifact and the intended audience is no longer able to provide a face-to-face interview.  

Gaining background knowledge on how the image was produced can also be helpful, but Knight cautions researchers to take a holisitc and complete view of context when analysing images by considering "the conditions of production and the meanings that audiences might have attached to them" (2002, 104).

I also found the section on Documentary Analysis interesting since I completed a project in my undergraduate degree that focused on analysing song lyrics of a Carribean genre of music called Chutney.  I was looking for ways in which this genre of music reflected and also constructed mainstream discourses of the Indo-Trinidadian identity.  The problem with my study is that it failed to establish causation   I was unable to understand if the music lyrics informed the discourses, or the discourses informed the music.