IntroductionâAdvances in Visual Methods
The ideas in this chapter have their heritage in the tradition of âvisual organisation studiesâ, a field we have been involved in developing over the past fifteen years. In particular we have been working with participant-led photography as a way of gathering data in numerous participatory field studies located in a variety of organisational contexts, including hairdressing (Shortt 2010, 2015; Shortt and Warren 2012), office work (Warren 2002, 2008, 2014; Shortt 2018), hospitals, university buildings (Shortt 2019) and accountancy (Warren and Parker 2009; Parker and Warren 2017). We understand the term participant-led photographic field studies to describe a methodology where research participants generate image-based data that connect with an empirical investigation of some aspect of their lives (e.g. see Vince and Warren 2012; Shortt and Warren 2019). These images might be part of a participants âpre-existingâ personal collection or have been made expressly for the needs of the study, but a central feature of the approach is that the photographer should be the participant. As well as producing images, the participant is also asked to attribute meaning and/or an explanation of their image to the researcher either during a research interview, or by supplying a captioning sentence.
This approach to generating data is rooted in visual sociology and social anthropology (Bateson and Mead 1942; Harper 1998; Collier and Collier 1986; Knowles and Sweetman 2004), and is where the use of photography in social research has brought a different perspective to the texture of peopleâs lives, homes, communities and working practices. The past twenty years have seen significant contributions in this field and a growth in the debates in favour of visual representation rather than a reliance on purely textual accounts (Banks 2001; Pink 2001), as well as arguments for the value of more participatory methods. Placing the camera in the hands of the participants, the âresearchedâ, allows for ânative image makingâ (Wagner 1979) and raises the voices of those that traditionally may not get heard and addresses the power balance between the researcher and the researched (Warren 2005). These advances in visual studies have also been propelled by the visual literacy present in our contemporary culture (Knowles and Sweetman 2004) where both visual representations of everyday and organisational life have become prevalent, as well as how we practically connect with, capture and share visual data through devices and online platforms.
Indeed, over this time, we have seen a fundamental shift in the way qualitative researchers have approached the use of visual methods, with technological advances being a major driving force for innovation. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, visual methods in business and management research were really just emerging as technology with cultural shifts enabling their spread and development. Over the last decade or so we have witnessed a growing interest among more mainstream management communities in harnessing the power of the visual to better understand organisational contexts (e.g. Meyer et al. 2013). In 2007 the ESRC funded International Network for Visual Studies in Organization (inVisio) was founded, at the same time as the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management series of conferences on âImagining Businessâ (2008, 2011), followed by the 2010 Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism themed âVisionâ. Management journals have published special issues on the visual including, the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (2009), Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management (2012) and Culture and Organization (2012), and two edited collections have been commissioned by the international publisher Routledge; Quattrone et al.âs (2011) Imagining Organziations, and Bell et al.âs (2014) handbook, The Routledge Companion to Visual Organization. Recognising this groundswell of interest, the ESRC further funded inVisio through a researcher development initiative (2010â2012) tasked with building capacity in visual methodologies among business and management researchers (www.âmoodle.âin-visio.âorg).
Certainly, the popularity of visual methodologies is likely to grow in the future, particularly since the visual culture we live and work within has seen such exponential growth over the same period with the digital revolution, most notably the emergence and rapid rise of social media. 71% of North Americans have a social media profile and the worldwide number of social media users is expected to reach 3.02 billion by 2021, a threefold rise in just 10 years (Statista 2019a). The global number of Instagram users is now 1 billion (Statista 2019b). These statistics demonstrate how widespread these new communication tools are in the lives of global populations. Importantly for this chapter, we are also seeing a shift towards circulating and sharing images as well as text-based content (such as status updates and âtweetsâ)â3.8 trillion photographs are estimated to have been taken from the invention of the camera until 2011, yet 1 trillion were taken in 2015 alone (Kane and Pear 2016). This image-explosion is in large part due to advances in Internet bandwidth, mobile data networks, smartphone storage and cloud computing. However, as we have argued at length elsewhere, (e.g. see contributors to Bell et al. 2014; Warren 2009, 2018), the visual has been a powerful communicative medium taking up a variety of technological forms throughout its history (Manghani et al. 2006) and so these developments should be seen in that light.
Our specific interest here is the role visual social media now plays in everyday life offering a wealth of opportunities to researchers who wish to explore the activities, behaviours, views and experiences of their participants. Specifically, our aim in this chapter is to contribute to a ânew waveâ of visual studies in a pragmatic and useful way, as well as a step-by-step guide on âhow toâŚâ set up, design and manage a research project that incorporates such platforms. We aim to help researchers make well-informed decisions when considering how visual social media might be used in organisational field studies. This is important for the development of visual organisation studies as a methodological field,ânot least to assist with gaining ethical approval from institutional committees and review boards.
Why Use Social Media/Instagram in Organisational Field Studies?
The past five years have seen a growing body of research examining social media and its opportunities, challenges and risks for researchers. There are now a considerable number of studies of social media in relation to a range of organisation and management research questions. From questions of âfree labourâ in the production of marketing content for brands on Facebook (Beverengen et al. 2015), to analyses of individualsâ visual identity in Facebook (Uimonen 2013), through to the use...