UNIT 3.
SOCIOLOGICAL
ANALYSIS OF VISUAL
TEXTS
SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Sociological analysis is therefore particularly
concerned with the social impact of
assessment and the perpetuation of educational
and social disparity, and its cumulative affects
in shaping ways in which individuals and
groups in society come to be seen, and to see
themselves (Filer, 1995).
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VISUAL TEXT
A visual text is a text in which the image plays
a major role in the audiences' response.
Although visual texts make meaning with
images, they don't have to be without words:
in fact, words and images are often combined
to make meaning.
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What is Visual Analysis?
In a visual analysis, you break down the
different elements of a text that communicates
primarily with visuals. Your goal is to
understand how these different elements
communicate the message and accomplish its
purpose.
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
1. Web Pages
• To share information
• To promote an organization
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
2. Flyers
• To attract participants to an activity
• To attract customers to a business
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
3. Posters
• To promote activities/ events/ values
• To advertise an event
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
4. Advertisements
• To encourage readers to purchase goods or
services
• To advertise jobs, products, or services
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
5. Brochures
• To provide detailed information of a specific
topic
• To advertise a product, event, or services
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Visual texts include everyday
material like:
6. Newsletters
• To provide information on a regular basis
• To promote certain activities
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As you develop your ideas for a visual analysis, though,
you might find it useful to follow three general steps:
1. Describe
2. Respond
3. Analyze
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Describe the Visual Text
Many people overlook this step, but simply
describing a visual text is an important part
of the process. Trying to analyze a visual
text without being able to first describe it
would be like trying to analyze an article
without being able to first summarize it.
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Describe the Visual Text
When you describe a visual text, you might
look at:
• Colors and shading
• Objects and shapes
• People and places
• Arrangement of elements on page
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Respond to the Visual Text
When you look at a visual text, think about:
• What’s my initial, gut reaction?
• How does the text make me feel?
• What does the text make me think?
• Does the text make we want to do something?
• Does the text remind me of anything I’ve
seen, heard, or read about before?
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Analyze the Visual Text
Push beyond description and response.
Consider how the text’s different elements
communicate a message and accomplish a
purpose. Remember the rhetorical situation:
The audience, object, and speaker of the
visual text. To think about how the text
communicates a message to its reader, ask
questions about each element you described.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
A theoretical approach attempts to understand
the root causes of something, and construct a
predictive model that explicitly says when the
event will happen again.
Theoretical approaches are more often used in
branches of knowledge where causes are better
understood, such as physics or geology.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
1. Structuralism
Structuralist look at the big picture and show
how society makes us what we are. They
concentrate on the way that the structure of
society has an influence on our everyday
lives.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Structuralism In Visual Communication
Structuralism, of the kind influenced by Saussure, emphasized signifying
systems, taking the production of meaning to be central to social life.
Structuralism therefore puts communication at the center of society and is
concerned with the identification of systems that generate meaning. While its
central theoretical influences were in linguistics, the general emphasis on
signification has allowed the extension and application of Saussure’s theories to
the language of cultural signs in general. Thus cultural artifacts, objects, and
practices, including visual modes of communication in their varied forms (art,
television, film, cartoons, etc.) have all been analyzed using the structuralist
approach.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
2. Interactionism
Interactionist focus down on smaller groups
and individuals. They concentrate on the
way people behave within a society, how
they interact with others and how people
live in their daily lives which, in turn, makes
society what it is.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Your understanding of a word or event changes
based on interactions with it. For example, if
you have a great relationship with your wife,
the word wife will be positive. However, if
your relationship with your wife is rocky, the
meaning behind the word and what a wife
symbolizes changes.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
While it might seem like a big name, symbolic
interactionism is how your experiences add
subjective meanings to symbols and letters. For
example, the word 'dog' is just a series of
letters. Through your interactions with the
letters 'dog', you see this as a furry, four-legged
canine.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
3. Consensus
Some sociologists say that society is held together
because people share a set of key norms and values that
are passed down from one generation the next through
the process we know as socialization. They are very
positive about the organizations and institutions in
society and there is a general level of agreement on the
way that society should develop. This is the basis of the
consensus approach the sociology. Another word for
consensus is agreement.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
3. Consensus
A consensus theory is one which believes
that the institutions of society are working
together to maintain social cohesion and
stability.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
4. Functionalism
The main group of sociologists that follow
these ideas are referred to as functionalists.
They see all the different parts of the society
working together like the parts of well- oiled
machine.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Functionalism in sociology sees the parts of society as components
of a cohesive whole. Each part performs a useful function. For
example, the parents in a family provides for the children, who will
in turn care for the parents when they become elderly.
Similarly, the person who builds the road will build roads that the
farmer drives on to get his produce to market, which the road
builder will then buy to eat. We all have a role to play in the proper
functioning of society.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
5. Conflict
Some sociologists see society as being
organized and structured so that some
groups do better than others. This means
that some people have control and the power
to decide what others should do. A society
organized in this way automatically involves
disagreement and conflict.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Examples of conflict theory
• Global capitalism's effect on inequality and power
• Pay inequalities between genders and races
• The 2008 financial crisis, in which large companies and banks received government
bailouts
• Government attempts to manage conflict between privileged and underprivileged citizens
through financial tools like taxes, incentives, minimum wage and regulations
• Relationships between groups like landlords and renters or employers and employees
• Inequalities in the public education system, in which students have unequal opportunities
for success
• Inequalities in the criminal justice system
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
6. Social Classes
Social classes have developed because
wealth and power are not shared out equally
in society.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
A social class is a grouping of people into a set
of hierarchical social categories, the most
common being the upper, middle and lower
classes. Membership in a social class can for
example be dependent on education, wealth,
occupation, income, and belonging to a
particular subculture or social network.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
7. Class Conflict
The group of sociologists who see social
classes as the main cause of conflict are
referred to as Marxist sociologists. The
differences that exist between the ruling
class and the working class are the real
reasons for disagreement and conflict.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare,
is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society
because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or
between rich and poor.
The forms of class conflict include direct violence such as wars for
resources and cheap labor, assassinations or revolution; indirect
violence such as deaths from poverty and starvation, illness and
unsafe working conditions; and economic coercion such as the threat
of unemployment or the withdrawal of investment capital
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
8. Feminism
Some feminist sociologists identify conflict
between men and women in society (gender
conflict) as their main concern. Radical
feminists see the root of the problem as male
power or patriarchy and believe that this is
seen in all institution in society from the
family through to the world of work.
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THEORETICAL APPROACHES
8. Feminism
Fights inequality within the
Liberal feminism
structure of a liberal democracy
Connects flaws in capitalism to
Socialist feminism
gender inequality
Entirely rejects patriarchy and the
Radical feminism
systems that uphold it
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PERCEIVING PERSONS, ATTITUDES, STREOTYPES,
PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION PERCEIVING
PERSON
Perceiving person, in sociological psychology, the
term person perception refers to the different
mental processes that we use to form impressions
of other people. This includes not just how we
form these impressions, but different conclusions
we make about other people based on our
impressions.
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ATTITUDE
Attitudes refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, and
behaviors toward a particular object, person, thing,
or event. Attitudes are often the result of
experience or upbringing, and they ‘can have a
powerful influence over behavior. While attitudes
are enduring, they can also change.
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EXAMPLES of ATTITUDE
Disgusted, Disinterested ; Dismissive,
Disrespectful ; Distant, Distrustful ; Emotional,
Empathetic ; Energetic,
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STEREOTYPE
Explicit stereotypes- are attitudes that are at the
conscious level, are deliberately formed and are
easy to self-report.
Implicit stereotypes- are attitudes that are at the
unconscious level, are involuntarily formed and
are typically unknown to us.
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EXAMPLES of STEREOTYPE
Some examples of stereotypes are the belief that women are
nurturing or the belief that police officers like donuts. An explicit
stereotype is the kind that you deliberately think about and report.
An implicit stereotype is one that is relatively inaccessible to
conscious awareness and/or control. Even if you say that men and
women are equally good at math, it is possible that you associate
math more strongly with men without being actively aware of it.
In this case we would say that you have an implicit math + men
stereotype.
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EXAMPLES of STEREOTYPE
Girls
Activities: drawing, dolls, singing, reading
Colors: pink, purple
Professions: teacher, nurse, mother/home-maker.
Boys
Activities: trucks, Legos, math
Colors: blue, green
Professions: doctor, principal, firefighter.
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PREJUDICE
Prejudice is an unreasonable dislike of
particular group of people or things, or a
preference for one group of people or things
over another.
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PREJUDICE
Prejudice is an idea or opinion that disregards
basic facts. It's akin to ignorance, or a lack of
knowledge, experience or education. It's
something that should not be tolerated, as we
all strive for betterment and higher learning.
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PREJUDICE
Is typically conceptualize as an attitude that,
like other attitudes:
cognitive component (e.g., beliefs about a
target group)
effective component (e.g., dislike)
conative component (e.g., a behavioral
predisposition to behave negatively toward
the target group).
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DISCRIMINATION
Is the practice of treating one person or group
of people less fairly or less well than other
people or groups.
Refers to inappropriate and potentially unfair
treatment of individuals due to group
membership.
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DISCRIMINATION
Discrimination is generally understood as
biased behavior, which includes not only
actions that directly harm or disadvantage
harm or disadvantage another group, but
those that unfairly favor one’s own group
(creating relative disadvantage for other
groups).
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DISCRIMINATION
Some characteristics may include:
1. Men and women do not receive equal pay for
doing the same or similar jobs.
2. People being discriminated against based upon
their race, color, religion, sex, and their
nationality.
3. People who are age 40 or older being
discriminated against based on age.
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DISCRIMINATION
Some characteristics may include:
4. People being discriminated against based on
their marital status.
5. Women who are pregnant being discriminated.
6. People being discriminated based on their
citizenship or national origin.
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DISCRIMINATION
Some characteristics may include:
7. People with disabilities based upon their
disability.
8. People being discriminated based upon the
differences in their DNA that make it more likely
that will get certain diseases.
9. People in the federal civilian workforce
discriminated based upon their sexual orientation.
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DISCRIMINATION
1. Institutional discrimination – refers to the
unjust and discriminatory mistreatment of an
individual or group of individuals by society and
its institutions as whole.
2. Cultural Racism- sometimes called neo-
racism, new racism, is a concept that has been
applied to prejudices and discrimination based on
cultural differences between ethnic and racial
groups.
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Basic processes in Prejudice, Stereotyping, and
Discrimination
2 types of Group Conflict
1. Inter-group conflict (in which distinct groups
of individuals are at odds with one another.)
2. Intra-group conflict (in which select
individuals that are part of the same groups clash
with one another)
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Basic processes in Prejudice, Stereotyping, and
Discrimination
3. Social Categorization- is the process of
classifying people into groups based on similar
characteristics, whether it be nationality, age,
occupation diagnosis, or some other trait.
4. Social Identity – relates to how we identify
ourselves in relation to others according to what
we have in common.
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TEXT ANALYSIS
Text Analysis is about parsing texts in order to
extract machine-readable facts from them. The
purpose of Text Analysis is to create structured
data out of free text content. The process can be
thought of as slicing and dicing heaps of
unstructured, heterogeneous documents into easy-
to-manage and interpret data pieces
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TEXT ANALYSIS
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CONTENT ANALYSIS
Content analysis is a research tool used to
determine the presence of certain words or
concepts within texts or sets of texts.
To conduct a content analysis is to try to describe
salient aspects of how a group of texts (in our
case, images or visual texts) represents some kinds
of people, processes, events, and/or
interrelationships between or amongst these.
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CONTENT ANALYSIS
Quantitative content analysis example
To research the importance of employment issues in
political campaigns, you could analyze campaign speeches
for the frequency of terms such as unemployment, jobs,
and work and use statistical analysis to find differences
over time or between candidates.
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CONTENT ANALYSIS
Qualitative content analysis example
To gain a more qualitative understanding of employment
issues in political campaigns, you could locate the
word unemployment in speeches, identify what other
words or phrases appear next to it (such
as economy, inequality or laziness), and analyze the
meanings of these relationships to better understand the
intentions and targets of different campaigns.
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