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