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Visual Discourse Analysis

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Peggy Albers
Peggy Albers
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VisualDiscourseAnalysis
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... To illustrate this framework, we examine laws from 23 states that have established the SoBL statewide through legislative action. We also analyze the visual depictions of the seals themselves through visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007(Albers, , 2014. Our inquiry was guided by the following research questions: ...
... In addition, although the SoBL policies themselves vary state to state, they are all organized around the central notion of a "seal." We therefore analyzed how biliteracy was visually framed and depicted through the seals themselves to complement our policy analysis through visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007(Albers, , 2014. This combined analysis offered multiple angles through which to explore the dynamics of biliteracy as property. ...
... Crucially, we do not argue that a causal relationship necessarily exists between a visual depiction and how a law is implemented. However, our methodological framework of visual discourse analysis underscores the importance of the messages communicated through visual semiotics (Albers, 2007(Albers, , 2014Hodge & Kress, 1988). Moreover, as research has established in the field of sigillography, seals have historically been designed specifically to convey particular messages around power and authority (Clanchy, 1993;New, 2010). ...
Biliteracy as Property: Promises and Perils of the Seal of Biliteracy
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2022
  • J LIT RES
A majority of U.S. states have established a "Seal of Biliteracy" (SoBL) to recognize students' multilingualism. Primarily under the purview of bilingual and world language education, the field of literacy research has remained largely silent on these seals. Yet, the authority these seals grant to state institutions for credentialing literacy has substantial implications for literacy research. This study analyzes 24 states that established a SoBL through legislative action. Informed by the study of seals as an ancient literacy practice, we draw on policy and visual discourse analysis to analyze state laws alongside the visual seals themselves. Incorporating theories of whiteness as property, we examine dynamics of racial, linguistic, and educational privilege to put forth a framework of biliteracy as property. Although we laud the growing popularity of the SoBL, we also caution against ceding authority to the state to assess, award, and "authenticate" biliteracy as a form of property.
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... Instagram is a largely visual platform with written components; therefore, I employed a combined visual discourse analysis (VDA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to attend to the images and written aspects of BGY. This mixed method approach is suitable for this study because VDA and CDA are commonly used to examine counter discourses, and these methods elucidate the micro and macro conversations within the visual and written components of a text (Albers 2013;Wodak and Meyer 2001). Researchers employ VDA and CDA when they are concerned with the underlying ideologies that are communicated through the texts or visuals (Albers 2013;Wodak and Meyer 2001). ...
... This mixed method approach is suitable for this study because VDA and CDA are commonly used to examine counter discourses, and these methods elucidate the micro and macro conversations within the visual and written components of a text (Albers 2013;Wodak and Meyer 2001). Researchers employ VDA and CDA when they are concerned with the underlying ideologies that are communicated through the texts or visuals (Albers 2013;Wodak and Meyer 2001). ...
... VDA allows researchers to explore how images act on the viewer (Albers 2013). Because Instagram is a mostly visual platform, VDA will help explicate how the images connect to discourses surrounding Black womanhood. ...
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... Eilam and Gilbert 2014 states that visual representation is a mechanism of recognition and perception that can transform visual information into actions and understanding. Representations serve as intermediaries that support the human thinking process, defining representation as a process involving effective communicative understanding, organization of ideas, and the development of concepts and models to explain acquired knowledge (Albers 2013). ...
Analysis of senior school students’ preconceptions regarding the concept of climate change in terms of visual representation explorations
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
Preconceptions are essential initial understandings that students possess, as they serve as the foundation for better learning. Regarding the concept of climate change, many students still harbor misconceptions. One way to identify students’ preconceptions is through the use of visual representations. The use of visual representations can unveil students’ preconceptions about abstract and complex concepts. This study aims to observe and analyze the extent of high school students’ understanding of climate change. It employs qualitative descriptive research, with a population and sample comprising 63 tenth-grade students majoring in natural sciences at a high school in Indonesia. Data collection techniques involve observation and interviews, with semi-structured interviews utilized in this study. The results reveal that students have varied understandings of the climate change concept, with many still holding misconceptions. There are three categories of climate change concepts: 1) accurate climate change concepts, accounting for 37% (23 students); 2) climate change concepts based on objects, as observed from the overall visualized images created by the respondents; and 3) incorrect climate change concepts, constituting 63% (40 students). From these categories, based on empirical evidence regarding students’ preconceptions of climate change, it falls into the macroscopic level.
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... Hutson, 2002;Jørgensen, 2015). Discourse is also carried by images and can be approached using visual discourse analysis (Jancsary et al., 2016;Albers, 2013). Further, discourses and their related interpretative repertoires can also be uncovered in quantitative survey data by interpreting responses as indicative of different ways of thinking and talking about particular matters (e.g. ...
The Social Production of Discourse in Archaeology
Chapter
  • Nov 2023
Archaeology is a profoundly social and collaborative enterprise. Even if it is a discipline of things, archaeology is also a discipline of discourses of things. The making of new archaeological information and knowledge both leans on and weaves a conversation of the past that is fundamentally as social as it is material. These conversations traverse an immense spectrum of archaeological practices and contexts far beyond archaeology itself. This chapter provides an overview of how discourses are produced in archaeology, their characteristics and contemporary facets, and how studying the social production of archaeological discourse(s) is helpful for understanding archaeology and archaeological knowledge. Discourse refers not only to talking or writing about archaeology but documenting, communicating and conveying archaeology, archaeological information and knowledge in diverse means, and by doing that, influencing archaeological practices and the production of archaeological knowledge. The chapter starts by asking where contemporary archaeological discourse is produced and continue to inquiring into who participates and who are left out, how to analyse and explain archaeological discourses, what characterises them, and finally, why understanding the social production of archaeological discourse can be useful for archaeologists and non-archaeologists.
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... To answer these questions, the WPR method was complemented by analysis of selected texts including definitions to understand the problem and the construction of children, particularly in relation to ICT and internet access as well as the underlying presuppositions and assumptions. The researcher also conducted a visual discourse analysis, which involves critical engagement with visuals to identify discourses and beliefs surrounding power relations by examining what or who is included or excluded in visuals, structuring of objects in visuals, and the social meanings attributed to subjects and objects in visuals (Albers, 2014). The researcher analysed all the visuals in the reports to examine the representation of children, by interrogating which children are under discussion in relation to gender, age, and other demographic factors. ...
Analysis of the constructions of children and the internet in Kenya and Ghana
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2022
This article uses Kenya and Ghana as case studies to analyse the construction of children, information and communication technologies (ICT) and the internet in Africa. The article discusses the interaction of girl-child protection and media risk discourses and the implication for children, girls, and women in Africa. It highlights the positioning of children in relation to ICT and the internet in terms of gender, age, class, and other demographic factors. It further examines whether, how and which children are constructed as agents or victims, and the ways in which their agency/victimhood is discussed. The article finds dominant child protection and media risk discourses focusing on the risk posed by the internet for children, particularly girls, as the main drivers of the representation of the problem. It also offers a critique of the solutions proposed to addressing the problems presented by the internet for children for taking a homogenising as well as a legalistic and regulatory approach. The article concludes by problematizing these problem representations and solutions, as well as the silences and the ways in which the in problems can be approached differently.
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... Second, our session invites AERA participants to consider critical visual methodologies as ways that enable us to analyze and interpret the multiple social identities that children visually represent in their multimodal texts. Research featured in this session is grounded in the notion that the integration of visual communication provides children, regardless of age, background, and literacy level, with powerful opportunities to build their understanding through various perspectives and ways of seeing (Albers, 2007(Albers, , 2014Author & Colleague, 2015;Siegel & Panofsky, 2009). ...
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... In both the larger study and the current study, data analysis followed a two-step process. The first step began with a visual analysis guided by Albers's (2007) work on Visual Discourse Analysis (VDA). This analysis focused on the images and labels/short phrases, and not the narrative, in each drawing set. ...
Drawing teachers: examining teacher gender in drawings by pre-service educators
Article
  • Dec 2021
This article examines representations of gender in teacher drawings by pre-service elementary educators enrolled in a literacy methods course in the southeast United States. A total of 55 pre-service teachers completed 110 drawings with brief narratives or 55 sets. Drawings were analyzed via visual discourse analysis and narratives were analyzed with the constant comparative method. Sets were examined specifically for D/discourses of gender. Three gender-related findings emerged including, the vast majority of drawings included representations of femininized teachers, gender minority as well as gender majority students did not necessarily identify as a teacher in the drawing, and teacher identities were negotiated between drawings. Implications include the need for teacher education programs that incorporate spaces for pre-service teachers to negotiate gender and conceptualizations of teachers in both course work and field experiences.
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... After gathering the material, I analysed each image using visual discourse analysis (VDA; (Albers, 2013). VDA can unfold how images are used as a medium to construct and disseminate sociotechnical imaginaries. ...
AV futures or futures with AVs? Bridging sociotechnical imaginaries and a multi-level perspective of autonomous vehicle visualisations in praxis
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2021
Current depictions of autonomous vehicle (AV) futures are produced primarily by automobile manufacturers that largely reflect and reinforce existing sociotechnical systems in a ‘business as usual’ model that frames this technology within a narrative of crisis and technological salvation. This article argues for a more complex analysis of AV futures in which images are understood as vessels for sociotechnical imaginaries that direct and delimit what we think is possible in the future. Through an analytical framework incorporating automobility, transitions, and imaginaries, I explore how depictions of AVs frame the technology as responding to various system pressures over time through a comparative analysis of two actors. The analysis suggests that regime actors deploy visual discursive material as a tool of regime stability or change to benefit their own agendas. The intention of the article is not to anticipate current trajectories but is a methodological exploration of how policymakers and planners can interpret AV visualisations. Therefore, the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these imaginaries for future transportation systems. It further suggests that policymakers and planners need to take a more active role in the development of AV futures by paying much more attention to the latent meanings behind AV visualisations and working collaboratively with those who produce them.
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Points of Exchange: Spatial Strategies for the Transition Towards Sustainable Urban Mobilities
Thesis
Full-text available
  • Sep 2021
The future of sustainable urban mobilities is a topic that is of increasing around the world. Dominant discussions focus on what these future urban mobilities will constitute and whether they will achieve targets to successfully decarbonise and to minimise the effects of climate change. Historically, transportation in our societies has mainly been approached from a positivist worldview that has attempted to understand the future through predictive models based on historical trends and relational extrapolation. However, the ambiguity created by the emergence of new transport innovations, such as self-driving cars, micromobility, battery-electric vehicles, and digital services, has created a high level of uncertainty about the future. This Industrial PhD thesis takes this challenge as a starting point. First, the thesis rejects the dominance of positivistic transport-planning approaches within the urban mobility discourse. Second, it explores how to deploy architectural modes of enquiry and tools of visualisation to develop novel methods for the development of sustainable mobilities for the future. A ‘research-through-design’ methodology is employed to incorporate architectural spatial knowledge and methods into mobilities research. This methodology is elaborated through a programmatic design research approach that generates knowledge on sustainability transitions in mobility through the development of design experiments that utilise mixed, and transdisciplinary methods.
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Seeing with the camera: Analysing children’s photographs of literacy in the home
Article
  • Dec 2002
  • J RES READ
This article examines the issues raised by photographs children took of reading in the home as part of a funded research project exploring the gendering of reading in the 7–9 age group. The main focus is on the dilemmas the images pose for analysis, and what the images, considered in themselves, can be taken as evidence for. This discussion is linked to current concerns about the nature of the support that homes could and should offer to the process of learning to read. United Kingdom Reading Association 2001.
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