Search results

This paper aims to propose a theoretically informed and analytically rigorous research framework that sustainability researchers could use or further develop to examine visually persuasive messages in photographs.

Drawing on the theoretical constructs of Peirce’s (1991) visual semiotic system of icon, index and symbol and Aristotle’s (1984) persuasive appeals of ethos, pathos and logos, the authors propose a research methodology that provides an explicit step-by-step guidance to examine visually persuasive messages in sustainability-related photographs. The sustainability-related photographs in The Coca-Cola Company’s 2018 Business and Sustainability Report are examined to illustrate the application of the framework.

This paper develops a research framework and provides empirical evidence of the use of the framework to enhance the understanding of visually persuasive messages depicted in photographs.

The proposed framework serves as a springboard for further research into visually persuasive messages.

The research framework of visual persuasion is novel and can be used by sustainability researchers to analyse photographs in corporate reports. It can be extended/modified to capture visual representations in different contexts and other disciplines as well.

To examine how social media restrict and recreate messages within current interactionist scripts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this study applies a framework of digital reflexivity highlighting stages of information flow. It applies the symbolic interaction concept of emotional events to analyze the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the role of social media in disseminating Bouazizi’s act as one catalyst of the MENA citizen uprisings. The role of social media in the “Arab Spring” merits investigation because social media provide opportunities to examine shifting identities, interactions, and actions of citizen activists in the MENA uprisings. This study is important and timely because little symbolic interactionist scholarship exists on MENA identities and social movements, or on crowd interaction and activism outside the West. The nuanced nature of MENA political activism and complex processes of the development of activists’ “mutable” selves (Zurcher, 1977) are fluid and resistant to symbolically defined social roles, interactionist scripts and reflexivity, and public communication practices in a MENA under political and social transition.

Contradictory accounts in empirical material are often perceived as deliberate “lies” or “misleading deceptions” performed in acts of impression management, or they are simply neglected. When observed in the material collected empirically, methods have been developed in order to identify and remove them from the analytical work. The purpose of this paper is to re-visit and re-introduce a dissensus-based management research strategy in order to analytically be able to work with what appear to be contradictions and misinformation in qualitative research accounts, and give them a more profound role in the understanding of management ideas, work and practices.

A literature review is presented on consensus and dissensus orientated theories on contradictions and multiple and conflicting identities in a single individual in an ethnographic inquiry. The purpose is to analyse and reflect upon the contradictory information gathered, and how it can shed light upon important aspects of the management work and practices performed by the informant. This is done by focusing on apparent contradictions in a single interview situation from an ethnographic case study through, respectively a consensus and a dissensus perspective.

The findings indicate that dealing with contradictions and inner conflicts between self-view and external demands and conditions, led the informant to the production of multiple narrative self-identities imaging multiple realities that all appeared real to the informant. Each of these realities had different and contradictory impacts on the ideas and management work and practices he presented and performed in the organisation. These findings challenge the notions of “lies”, “deception” and “misinformation” in management research, and call for a more reflexive approach to analysis work in ethnographic accounts.

By applying consensus and dissensus-oriented theories to a single account the authors point to conditions, phenomena and relations, which most current and historic management research streams fail to see. Multiple and conflicting identities surface in a single respondent during an interview situation, creating clearly self-contradictory and conflicting narratives and practices, that all appear to be oblivious to the respondent. These multiple and contradictory narrative identities all have significant impact on the management work performed by the respondent.

The development of qualitative research methods addresses the need to explore, understand and interpret complex and subjective phenomena across various fields of study. These methods are guided by methodological frameworks, and data collection involves taking several precautions for observation or interviews. While these guidelines facilitate an emphasis on the objective aspects of discourse, accounting for subjectivity and emotions proves more challenging. However, these subjectivity and emotions are deemed as significant sources of information. In this chapter, we propose an innovative data collection method centred around creating collages and engaging in group discussions to decipher their meaning. Collage serves as a visual medium, and we recommend utilising semiotic analysis tools to comprehend its significance. To gain a more precise understanding of the value of collage as a data collection method, we studied a collage workshop organised by CREE. Through image analysis and exchanges, our findings reveal that collage acts as a physical medium that fosters exchanges, deepens ideas and restricts digressions. Additionally, collage allows for the expression and discussion of emotions linked to the image rather than the individual. The space of intersubjective reflexivity facilitated by collage enables a profound comprehension, critical assessment and augmentation of ideas and the interpretation of emotions without compromising the sensitivity of the author. This chapter’s main contribution is evidently manifested here.

This chapter discusses ethics in participatory photography with focus on refugee participants and informal refugee camp setting. The chapter draws on ethics in participatory photography projects elsewhere and especially the experiences of photographers who work with these methods. The context here is the Calais Jungle camp, where the authors worked with a group of participants, who were residents of the camp, over several months to encourage photographing and documenting life in the camp and beyond, and to work on life stories that can be drawn from and inspired by these photos. The project, and hence the ethics in our work, were framed by the experiences of the refugee participants, and so at all times the authors needed to navigate temporality, violence, state oppression, lack of resources, human rights violations, language barriers, religious and cultural differences, national and supranational immigration policies, shame, and more. This chapter discusses how the authors navigated these ethical issues, the limitations of the approaches and solutions they found, and the lessons they learned, which can be applied to research using participatory visual methods with refugees.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a visual perspective to the narrative management research by exploring the potential of drawings to construct organizational space. This study is explorative in nature and aims to open up a discussion on the importance of visuality within the narrative research. Visual narratives combined with written ones are constructed and analyzed in the paper.

The empirical illustrations of visual narratives outline students’ first-time encounters of the university campus. Their drawings and stories are used to describe and analyze their personal and subjective experiences of how they relate to the campus space. The students were asked to recall the moment they encountered the university campus for the first time and to draw their memories on a paper. Furthermore, they were asked to describe the drawings in a written narrative. Following that, the storyline was identified through a content analysis of both the drawings and the written narratives. This participatory research approach considers informants as co-researchers in producing data and emphasizes the inter-subjective nature of the study.

The study points out valuable aspects in visual narrative organization research. The drawings and written narratives were found to complement each other revealing different things of the experiences. The drawings were very rich and detailed. They captured and revealed emotions, symbolic meanings and interpretations that were not explicated in the written stories. Finally, categories of visual narratives on organizational space were developed.

This study contributes to the development of visual methodology in narrative management research. Moreover, this paper provides a methodological contribution to study organizational space. It sheds light on the potential of using visual narrative materials, especially self-produced drawings to construct organizational space. The study develops and illustrates a visual research method that combines written narratives with drawings. The study points out the importance to involve the informants as co-creators of a narrative study to capture the emotional richness of visual narratives. The authors envision that visual aspects of narratives will be a future direction in the narrative research, because visuality may capture hidden emotional aspects, symbols and artifacts that are not easily revealed in the told or written stories.

In the past years, the importance of the cultural economy has led urbanism to a new perspective. Simultaneously, the main international institutions have pointed out the need to shift the urban economy into a sustainable one, green and energy efficient. The confluence of both flows explains why the imaginaries of the urban future are related to the concept of creative cities. Hence, the new economic engine of the cities should be founded on art, creativity and culture, all of them understood as clean energies. This study aims to show the crucial role of cultural heritage as a propeller of a new kind of urban development, more flexible and democratic, based on the construction of the city as a communicational, collective and open effort. Therefore, the city is conceived as a cultural heritage platform where tangible and intangible, social and creative interactions happen. Within this context, urban narratives appear as a dynamic material drawn on the possibilities offered by the heritage received from the past as a resource to be used for re-thinking and re-shaping the future.

The approach of this paper is based on a profound analysis of historical cities, mainly in the European context, supported by the work carried out within the H2020 ROCK project. The cities within the project are: Athens, Bologna, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Lisbon, Liverpool, Lyon, Torino, Skopje and Vilnius. A wide variety of case studies coming mainly from these cities have been considered to understand better the theoretical point of view on the role of heritage, urban development and city branding. The information about cultural heritage projects used as case studies has been collected and selected coming from the direct work made on the field and the communication open with institutions and cultural stakeholders in every city. Even more, parallel seminars on cultural heritage and city branding organized within the project have allowed the authors to gather very valuable, updated and fresh information on these issues in every particular case.

The study proves that cultural heritage has been traditionally underrated as a mechanism for developing the future of the city and its communicative strategy. Cultural heritage appears as a practical tool for constructing more cohesive urban communities based on the use of public space and shared memories as storytelling platforms. The capacity of resiliency and sustainability revealed by cultural heritage through the time is, as well, a clear reference to construct a potential sustainable city, socially, culturally and environmentally.

Cultural heritage projects are shown as a perfect way to build stronger communities. Through the engagement and participation of citizens, urban storytelling reinforces a more open, real and sustainable city able to face the challenges of contemporary life (gentrification, pollution, mobility, etc.). Like that, heritage appears as a feasible tool for including citizens coming from all ages and backgrounds in the construction of a collective narrative of the city, based on the past and looking at the foreseen.

This study tries to relate fields that traditionally have remained not well connected: urban development, city branding and cultural heritage. The study demonstrates that cultural heritage is crucial as an urban narrative tool and consequently, as a planning/branding mechanism. Moreover, cultural institutions and cultural projects are very relevant platforms for social interaction, inviting citizens to have a more active role in the construction of the city as a collective communicational effort based on a network of social and cultural relations. Storytelling turns up as a new key element for communicating the city from grassroots, in a sustainable, democratic and inclusive manner, far away from the traditional top-down official perspective. Crowdsourcing methods are very powerful for establishing a shared and cohesive city brand, now rooted in its cultural and social foundations and not the marketing campaign clichés. Finally, storytelling emerges as a creative resource that enhances the social, cultural and economic layout of the city, forcing urbanists to include a greener, fairer and more democratic perspective in the future of cities.

The purpose of this paper is to recognise communication as a central challenge between autistic and non-autistic individuals as the autistic voice is not silent, but lacks involvement at any level other than that of the observed participant (Milton and Bracher, 2013; NAS and Ask Autism, 2014; Parsons et al., 2009). The main research question, therefore, explores data to understand how some autistic individuals conceptualise their experiences.

The research design, informed by autistic people, used a flexible methodology to accommodate their communication preferences. Methods contextualised autistic narratives regarding support requirements and service provision and located power within these, acknowledging autistic individuals as the expert “insider”. This is critical in tackling access to services and social barriers to inclusion impacting negatively on well-being. Visual and written data were gathered using collage and narrative diary methods, and presented and analysed as three individual case studies (anonymised as Michael, Sophie and Peter) and as a meta-analysis providing a broad picture of themes.

Findings showed similarities and differences in a number of key areas, so highlighting the importance of the smaller narratives within the broad picture of autism.

This study’s key contribution to autism research is that it blends IPA, narrative analysis and discourse analysis with distinct sites of analysis (narrative process, images of autism, audiencing, turning points and discourse). Furthermore, the flexible methodology employed facilitates inclusion of autistic voices by embracing their diverse communication preferences.