MODULE MM32 (EMMIR)
Course content & schedule is going to be available by the end of February!!!
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH BOHEMIA, the Czech Republic
Representation, Ethnicity and Nation State
12 ECTS (for EMMIR students), 4 CRED. (for USB students)
Full syllabus in PDF [download]
SUBMODULE 2
Sociological Imagination, Visual Sociology and Digital Storytelling
1st November – 30th November
Tutor: Michal Šimůnek, simunek.michal@gmail.com
Go to:
WEEK 5 (6th November)
WEEK 6 (13th November)
WEEK 7 (20th November)
WEEK 8 (27th November)
Submodule description
The objective of the 2nb submodule is to deepen understanding of otherness through reflection on visual social sciencences and consideration of several issues related to the so called visual turn, sensory turn, digital turn and dialogical turn in the social sciences. The submodule will introduce students to visual and digital research methodology and to selected new media and digital storytelling techniques and authoring tools used for producing and publishing sociological and socially relevant representations. Selected representational techniques will be introduced along with the current methodological and epistemological debates (the shift from positivism to post-positivism, from visual to sensory, dialogical and digital turn, from science to activism/publicly engaged science etc.).
Students are asked to reflect on the obligatory litterature, visual and hypermedia projects and actively participate in the seminars.
Final Submodule Grade:
• 50 % writing a reflection papers
• 50 % active participation in the seminars
PARTIAL CONTENT CHANGES RESERVED
WEEK 5 (7th November)
Newton Has Not Arrived But the Other Is Behind the Door
Key topics of discussion: visual turn, sensory turn, visual social sciences, positivism vs. post-positivism, science, publicly engaged science and activism, social indexicality and multiplication of photographic indexicality, multimodality, subject – object debate.
Assignment:
Students are asked to read obligatory literature (see below) and to write a reflection page (aprox. 500 words) guided by the following guidelines: There are two obligatory articles. I recommend you to start your reading with Ball’s & Gilligan’s article „Visualising Migration and Social Division…“. This is partly editorial introduction article for the visual-migration issue of FQS, partly brief but very useful and accessible overview of visual methodologies, visual research strategies and its possible applications to social research on migration and social division. The second obligatory article is famous Latour’s article on the ways how (scientific) knowledge is usually represented. After reading these two papers browse through the book A Seventh Man (John Berger and Jean Mohr) – it is classical and still highly evaluated visually based research/photodocumentary on migration. Your task is to read A Seventh Man through the perspective of the upper mentioned articles and try to reflect mainly on the following issues:
– How (if at all) photographs enrich your understanding of the book’s topic?
– What are the relations between image and text? What kind of knowledge are photographs able to deliver? What do photographs convey? Can they convey something without being accompanied by words/text? Are images really worth a thousad words?
Deadline for submission: 5th November, 10.00 PM (e-mail your reflection page to the tutor)
Obligatory reading:
– Ball, Susan & Gilligan, Chris (2010): “Visualising Migration and Social Division: Insights From Social Sciences and the Visual Arts.“ Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(2), Art. 32.
– Latour, Bruno. 1990. „Drawing Things Together.“ in Lynch, Michael, Steve Woolgar (eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice, 19-68. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press.
– Berger, John & Mohr, Jean (1975). A seventh man: The story of a migrant worker in Europe. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Suggested readings:
– Pauwels, Luc. 2010. „Visual Sociology Reframed: An Analytical Synthesis and Discussion of Visual Methods in Social and Cultural Research.“ Sociological Methods & Research 38(4): 545–581.
– Prosser, Jon, Dona Schwartz 2005. „Photographs within the Sociological Research Process.“ Pp. 101–115 in Jon Prosser (ed.). Image-based Research. A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Routledge.
– Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies. An Introduction the the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. [Chapter 11: Making photographs as part of a research project: photo-elicitation, photo-documentation and other uses of photos. (pp. 237–256)].
WEEK 6 (13th November)
How to Open the Door? On The Digital and Dialogical Turn in the Social Sciences
Key topics of discussion: from visual to digital and dialogical turn, participatory/user generated representations, new devices and authoring tools, from activism to clictivism, the ethnography for the digital age (visual and multi- semiotic/multimodal forms of communication, etnographic representations, authorship and readership), ethnographic hypermedia environment, interactive documentary (i-docs), collabdocs, webdocumentary, crowdsourcing, serious games, mixed media, techno-optimism and techno-pessimism, obstacles of digital/dialogical turn: methodological dogmatism, information/sensual overload, digital divide, black box, decontextualisation and disembeddin, digital storytelling projects, …
Assignment:
Students are asked to read obligatory literature (see below) and to write a reflection page (aprox. 500 words) on one of the following multimedia projects:
– Forgotten Flags: http://www.vergessene-fahnen.de/korsakow/
– Hometown Baghdad: http://chattheplanet.com/index.php?page=videos
– Crisis Guide: Darfur: http://www.cfr.org/sudan/crisis-guide-darfur/p13129
– 6 Billion Others: http://www.6billionothers.org
– One In 8 Million: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html
– Behind the Veil: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/static/world/behindtheveil/index.html
– Narrative (several different projects, choose just one): http://www.narrative.info/productions/
– Talking to the Taliban: http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/talkingtothetaliban/
– Iron Curtain Diaries: http://www.theironcurtaindiaries.org/map.html
– Prison Valley: http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en
-.Storming Juno: http://www.stormingjuno.com
– Global Lives Project: http://globallives.org/
– Out My Window: http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/outmywindow/
Try to reflect mainly on the following issues:
• Do you consider the multimedia project as scientific or rather journalistic, documentary, activist or something else?
• What are the limits and strengths of the multimedia projects (in terms of possible effects on depicted people and scenes, of our understanding the world of depicted people)?
• How can these projects increase mutual understanding between “we” and “other”?
• In what sense could multimedia projects be an inevitable instrument of social domination of scientists/activists over their object of study?
• How (if at all) multimedia presentations enrich your understanding of a particular research findings or social phenomena?
• What kind of knowledge are multimedia projects able to deliver?
I expect your answers to be informed by readings, but it is sufficient if your answers are rather subjective and „dilettante“ (do not worry to mention banalities and obvious matters), your reflections can be not-theoretically-and-conceptually-illuminated. Simply saying, just try to reflect on hypermedia projects from the position of you-as-a-reader/looker/listener.
Deadline for submission: 12th November, 10.00 PM (e-mail your reflection page to the tutor)
Obligatory literature:
– Dicks, Bella; Bambo Soyinka, Amanda Coffey. 2006. „Multimodal ethnography.“ Qualitative Research 6(1): 77-96.
– Heng, Terence. 2011. „Recent Methodological Opportunities in Online Hypermedia – a Case Study of Photojournalism in Singapore. Sociological Research Online 16 (2).
– Murthy, Dhiraj. 2008. „Digital Ethnography: An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research.“ Sociology 42 (5): 837-855.
Suggested readings:
– Buckingham, David. 2009. „Creative Visual Methods in Media Research: possibilities, Problems and Proposals.“ Media, Culture and Society 31 (4): 633-652.
– Pauwels, Luc. 2002. „The video- and multimedia-article as a mode of scholarly communication: toward scientifically informed expression and aesthetics.“ Visual Studies 17 (2): 150-159.
– Sandercock, Leonie, Giovanni Attili. 2010. „Digital Ethnography as Planning Praxis: An Experiment with Film as Social Research, Community Engagement and Policy Dialogue.“ Planning Theory and Practice 11 (1): 23-45.
Recomended online sources:
– Ethnography for the Digital Age: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/hyper/p02/index.html
– Interactive Docimentary: http://www.i-docs.org
– Collabdosc: http://collabdocs.wordpress.com
– NFB: http://www.nfb.ca/interactive
– Magnum In Motion: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com
-.Documentary Organisation of Canada: http://www.doctoronto.ca/docshift-index
– Clictivism: http://www.clicktivism.org
– Kliktivismus: http://www.kliktivisti.cz (written in Czech Language)
WEEK 7 (20st November)
Trying to Open the Door or On Digital and Dialogical Storytelling
Workshop: planning a digital storytelling project (topic, research questions, methods, framework for a fieldwork, selecting a case,…), learning practical skills of audio-visual data collection and editing (basics of digital photography and audio recording; producing and presenting audio slideshows, software for digital storytelling, using Photoshop Express Editor, Audacity and Soundslides software); ethics of participatory and visual research (informed consent, problems of anonymisation); composing audio visual narratives; launching the „course’s website/blog“; discussion about selected digital storytelling projects, …
Assignment:
Students are asked
• Students are asked to read obligatory literature (see below) and to write a reflection page (aprox. 500 words).
Deadline for submission: 26th November, 10 PM.
Obligatoary litterature:
– Reitmaier, Thomas, Nicola J. Bidwell, Gary Marsden. 2011. “Situating digital storytelling within African communities.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 69: 658-668.
– Hancox, Donna. 2012. “The Process of Remembering with the Forgotten Australians: Digital Storytelling and Marginalized Groups.” An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human in ICT Environments 8(1): 65-76.
Suggested literature:
– Grady, John 2004. „Working with Visible Evidence: An Invitation and Some Practical Advice.“ Pp. 18–32 in Carolen Knowles, Paul Sweetman (eds.). Picturing the Social Landscape: Visual Methods and the Sociological Imagination, edited by Caroline Knowles and Paul Sweetman, 18–32. London: Routledge.
– Wiles, Rose; Prosser, Jon; Bagnoli, Anna et al. 2008. Visual Ethics: Ethical Issues in Visual Research. NCRM.
– Reitmaier, Thomas, Nicola J. Bidwell, Gary Marsden. 2011. “Situating digital storytelling within African communities.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 69: 658-668.
– Hancox, Donna. 2012. “The Process of Remembering with the Forgotten Australians: Digital Storytelling and Marginalized Groups.” An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human in ICT Environments 8(1): 65-76.
– Lambert, Joe. 2009. Digital Storytelling.Capturing Lives, Creating Community. Berkeley, CA: Digital Diner Press.
– Hartley, John, Kelly McWilliam (eds.). 2009. Story Circle. Digital Storytelling Around the World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Recommended online sources:
– Centre for Digital Storytelling: http://www.storycenter.org/
– Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
– Soundslides: http://www.soundslides.com/
– Photoshop Express Editor: http://www.photoshop.com/tools/expresseditor
– Jessica Lum, How to Make an Audio Slideshow: http://www.petapixel.com/2009/11/20/how-to-make-an-audio-slideshow/
– Mastering Multimedia, How to Make Your Audioslideshows Better:http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/how-to-make-your-audio-slideshows-better/
WEEK 8 (27th November)
The Door Is … ?
Summary of the course and evaluation
Online resources for further study and inspiration:
• http://www.visualsociology.org/
• http://www.photherel.net/photherel.net/www.photherel.net/index.html
• http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/
• http://www.visualanthropology.net/
• http://www.vimeo.com/groups/overlap
• http://www.rinasherman.com
• http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/
• http://www.artlab.org.uk/
• http://www.icahdq.org/
• http://fotoprednasky.ffa.vutbr.cz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44&Itemid=56
• http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org
• http://docalliancefilms.com/
Further useful online sources are going to be found in the presentaions of the tutor (presentations are going to be published on this site immediatly after each week’s lecture).