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
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Conversation  Interface
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Conversation  Naturalising Interface  Code  interface  Interface  Conversation
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Data
Conversation  Interface
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Analytics
Conversation  Interface
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Sentiments Preferences consumption patterns
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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 
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CONCEPT ’
 shared definition 
shared Exemplification
Contextualisation
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Re-Contextualisation
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CONCEPT ’’
your re-definition
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your Exemplification’ 
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Interpretation
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  
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 Re-articulation (doing your work/writing
Analysis
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– as researched, reflective process/practice
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Independence
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Self-critique
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‘FINISH’
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Reflective Articulation 
Reflection
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Re-appropriation  Shared Critique
Appropriation
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Critique
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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 (trutheffects);
• 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;
•
•
•
•
•
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“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