ABSTRACT

This comprehensive volume explores the set of theoretical, methodological, ethical and analytical issues that shape the ways in which visual qualitative research is conducted in psychology. Using visual data such as film making, social media analyses, photography and model making, the book uniquely uses visual qualitative methods to broaden our understanding of experience and subjectivity.

In recent years, visual research has seen a growing emphasis on the importance of culture in experience-based qualitative methods. Featuring contributors from diverse research backgrounds including narrative psychology, personal construct theory and psychoanalysis, the book examines the potential for visual methods in psychology. In each chapter of the book, the contributors explore and address how a visual approach has contributed to existing social and psychological theory in their line of research.

The book provides up-to-date insights into combining methods to create new multi-modal methodologies, and analyses these with psychology-specific questions in mind. It covers topics such as sexuality, identity, group processes, child development, forensic psychology, race and gender, and would be the ideal companion for those studying or undertaking research in disciplines like psychology, sociology and gender studies.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

ByPaula Reavey

chapter 1|19 pages

The return to experience

Psychology and the visual
ByPaula Reavey

part I|94 pages

Static media

chapter 2|13 pages

Image and imagination

ByAlan Radley

chapter 3|16 pages

Bend it like Beckham?

The challenges of reading gender and visual culture
ByRosalind Gill

chapter 4|13 pages

Using photographs to explore the embodiment of pleasure in everyday life

ByLilliana Del Busso

chapter 5|14 pages

Narrating biographical disruption and repair

Exploring the place of absent images in women’s experiences of cancer and chemotherapy
ByHannah Frith

chapter 7|20 pages

Reflections on a photo-production study

Practical, analytic and epistemic issues
BySteven D. Brown, Ava Kanyeredzi, Laura McGrath, Paula Reavey, Ian Tucker

part II|123 pages

Dynamic features

chapter 8|13 pages

Mental health apps, self-tracking and the visual

ByLewis Goodings

chapter 9|18 pages

The visual in psychological research and child witness practice

ByJohanna Motzkau

chapter 10|21 pages

The video-camera as a cultural object

The presence of (an)other
ByMichael Forrester

chapter 11|15 pages

Girls on film

Video diaries as ‘autoethnographies’
ByMaria Pini, Valerie Walkerdine

chapter 12|19 pages

Visual identities

Choreographies of gaze, body movement and speech and ‘ways of knowing’ in mother–midwife interaction
ByHelen Lomax

chapter 13|18 pages

Methodological considerations for visual research on Instagram

ByKayla Marshall, Kerry Chamberlain, Darrin Hodgetts

chapter 14|17 pages

The big picture

Using visual methods to explore online photo sharing and gender in digital space
ByRose Capdevila, Lisa Lazard

part III|227 pages

Shared visions

chapter 15|18 pages

Visualising mental health with an LGBT community group

Method, process, (affect) theory
ByKatherine Johnson

chapter 16|24 pages

Imagery and association in a group-based method

The visual matrix
ByLynn Froggett

chapter 17|22 pages

Working with group-level data in phenomenological research

A modified visual matrix method *
ByDarren Langdridge, Jacqui Gabb, Jamie Lawson

chapter 18|18 pages

Risk communication and participatory research

‘Fuzzy-felt’, visual games and group discussion of complex issues
ByAngela Cassidy, John Maule

chapter 19|17 pages

Picturing the field

Social action research, psychoanalytic theory, and documentary filmmaking
ByJanice Haaken

chapter 20|18 pages

Moving from social networks to visual metaphors with the Relational Mapping Interview

An example in early psychosis 1
ByZoë V.R. Boden, Michael Larkin

chapter 21|18 pages

Building visual worlds

Maps as a tool for exploring located experience
ByLaura McGrath, Shauna Mullarkey

chapter 22|15 pages

Towards a visual social psychology of identity and representation

Photographing the self, weaving the family in a multicultural British community
ByCaroline Howarth, Shose Kessi

chapter 23|19 pages

‘I didn’t know that I could feel this relaxed in my body’

Using visual methods to research bisexual people’s embodied experiences of subjectivity and space
ByHelen Bowes-Catton, Meg-John Barker, Christina Richards

chapter 24|13 pages

Travelling along ‘rivers of experience’

Personal construct psychology and visual metaphors in research
ByAlex Iantaffi

chapter 25|13 pages

Psychogeography and the study of social environments

Extending visual methodological research in psychology
ByAlexander John Bridger

chapter 26|16 pages

Tribal gatherings

Using art to disseminate research on club culture
BySarah Riley, Richard Brown, Christine Griffin, Yvette Morey

chapter 27|14 pages

Sometimes all the lights go out in my head

Creating Blackout, the multi-sensory immersive experience of bipolar II
ByPaul Hanna, Mig Burgess

part IV|103 pages

Ethical, analytical and methodological reflections on visual research

chapter 29|17 pages

Image-based methodology in social psychology in Brazil

Perspectives and possibilities
ByArley Andriolo

chapter 30|17 pages

Impressionist reflections on visual research in community research and action

ByDarrin Hodgetts, Kerry Chamberlain, Shiloh Groot

chapter 31|19 pages

Polytextual thematic analysis for visual data

Analysing visual images
ByKate Gleeson

chapter 32|17 pages

‘So you think we’ve moved, changed, the representation got more what?’

Methodological and analytical reflections on visual (photo-elicitation) methods used in the men-as-fathers study
ByKaren Henwood, Fiona Shirani, Mark Finn

chapter 33|16 pages

On utilising a visual methodology

Shared reflections and tensions
ByIlana Mountian, Rebecca Lawthom, Anne Kellock, Karen Duggan, Judith Sixsmith, Carolyn Kagan, Jennifer Hawkins, John Haworth, Asiya Siddiquee, Claire Worley, David Brown, John Griffiths, Christina Purcell