Consuming Images, Ethics, and Integrity in Visual Social Research

Abstract

The use of images in social research can be traced to the mid-twentieth-century sociological inquiry of John Collier and Pierre Bourdieu and the anthropological film and photography of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who sought to understand culture by making it visible. More recently, rapid developments in digital technology have extended the range of visual methodologies and the diversity of visual material available for research. Contemporary visual methods encompassing participatory video, collaborative cellphilms, photo-voice, and photo-elicitation reflect an increasingly dynamic digital visual culture and offer new possibilities for researchers to illuminate social issues. However, alongside the potential of these, new visual methods and technologies have arisen a number of ethical challenges. Rapid transformations in the ways in which images are produced, communicated, and consumed within a new digital visual and media landscape have outpaced developments in research governance and codes of practice. Moreover, the democratization of research in which research participants share in the production of research troubles traditional research hierarchies and decision-making about what gets seen and shared while the potential of digitized images to circulate beyond the immediate temporal and spatial confines of research calls into question the appropriateness of formalized ethical frameworks based on principles of anonymity and confidentiality.