Best practices
This section brings together concrete examples of how researchers address ethical, legal, and methodological challenges in visual social research. The practices described here were provided by researchers and professionals in the field and aim to offer food for thought, practical solutions, and concrete insights at various stages of the research lifecycle.
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6. Archiving & Preservation Phase - Alternative Descriptions:
Sensitive images stemming from couples’ and friends’ relationships were replaced by textual descriptions.
Author: Katharina Lobinger | USI Università della Svizzera italiana
Short Description
This is an example of a research project where images could not be shared on an open data repository for future use, but image descriptions were necessary to make interview transcripts and the verbal data understandable. For long-term preservation and open data, the project thus “Visualized relationships” built a dataset in which anonymized interview transcripts and contextual research files were prepared for future scholarly use, while highly sensitive participant visuals had to be replaced by written image descriptions.
Problem Description
The project “Visualized Relationships” investigated visual communication in close friendships and romantic partnerships and therefore works with particularly delicate materials: participant-created and/or participant-selected photographs, additional interviewer-produced images, interview audio files, observation notes, and network drawings. At the preservation stage, the project faced a central open data dilemma: visual materials are highly valuable for understanding visual communication practices, but as the visuals stem from close or intimate relationships, they are too sensitive to be made fully accessible on a data repository.
Implementation Strategy
The project team addressed this issue by preparing different categories of materials for different levels of long-term accessibility. First, the project established that anonymous transcripts would be made accessible on a data repository for secondary uses, accessible only to researchers with permission. Second, these transcripts were not archived as isolated text files. For each interviewed dyad (couple or friendship dyad), the research team created a case-based data package consisting of three interviews, metadata, photo descriptions, network drawing, and observation protocol. This means that future users will receive a richer anonymized analytical unit. Third, the project explicitly states that visual data cannot be made available in the repository for further research use for reasons of data protection and research ethics. Instead, descriptions of the images were produced and made accessible. While they do not fully substitute the visual material, they signal its existence and make the interview transcripts understandable. This procedure was also communicated to participants when obtaining consent.
Data & Metrics
Visuals that couples and friends use in their daily life. These visuals were either provided by participants (e.g. important or typical images used within the relationship) or photographs taken by the researchers with a dedicated camera (photographs of images that were shown during interviews).
What Worked Well
Not sharing visual data on repositories protected participants, some of which were vulnerable or in secret relationships that should not be exposed. Furthermore, in some cases large numbers of visuals were collected per dyad, which provides very personal and intimate insights into the relationship. These were relevant to consider during analysis but too sensitive to share for future uses.
Limitations & Challenges
The approach requires substantial additional documentation work because every excluded visual had to be translated into a short, written description. These descriptions do not present adequate substitutes for the visuals themselves but rather serve to make the interview transcripts understandable as they transcribed texts often refer to visual material. Another limitation is that the future analysis of visual data is not possible.
Lobinger, K., Lucchesi, F., & Tarnutzer, S. (2024). Visualized relationships (ViRe) - Image type overview and short descriptions. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10557227
Lobinger, K., Lucchesi, F., & Tarnutzer, S. (n.d.). Pair and individual interviews with couples and friends in Switzerland (ViRe) (Version 1.0) [Dataset]. FORS data service. https://doi.org/10.48573/FRMK-2S13
Tarnutzer, S., Lobinger, K., & Lucchesi, F. (2024). Image types revisited. A texto-material approach for creating image types. Studies in Communication Sciences, 24(1), 103–121. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2024.01.3894
1. Conceptual Phase - Data Management Plan:
The Right to Disappear
Author: Patricia Prieto Blanco
Short Description
In addition to developing a plan for secure data storage and preservation, data management plans should clearly outline when data will be permanently deleted.
Problem Description
Universities and other research institutions recommend that data are preserved for ten years, however, researchers should be critical of this standard period of data storage, particularly when it comes to images in which research participants are identifiable. Committing to preserve images identifying participants for a decade is a very relevant concern for researchers who do not have a permanent position at the research institution where they have carried out their research project, i.e. researchers in precarious employment conditions should be particularly critical and weary of leaving the deletion of images up to the discretion of an institution to which in the mostly likely case they won’t be affiliated in 10 years time.
It must be noted that when it comes to other types of participants’ personal data, it is not commonplace to keep them for so long. In fact perhaps the opposite is true as many research projects proceed to permanently destroy participants’ personal data fairly soon in the research process e.g. once participants’ contributions have been aggregated to the rest of the data. Images showing your participants in a particular moment of their life should not haunt them for decades. While it is unlikely that one of our images ends up having as much impact as the one known as “The Migrant Mother”, let’s let Dorothea Lange teach us a lesson on what not to do when it comes to visual research.
Implementation Strategy
My suggestion is that you ask yourself three questions: (1) how long is it absolutely necessary to keep images from which your participants can be identified?; (2) how long will I be able to have control over the deletion of these images?; and (3) what do I need to put in place to ensure these images/data permanently and irrevocably disappear when it is time?
Data & Metrics
Images from which research participants can be identified.
What Worked Well
It aligns data management with the principle of no harm in a way that suits the research project instead of bindly complying with policies designed for non-visual research data.
Limitations & Challenges
See above.
Prieto-Blanco, P. (2021). Afterword: Visual Research in Migration. (In)Visibilities, Participation, Discourses. In: Nikielska-Sekula, K., Desille, A. (eds) Visual Methodology in Migration Studies. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67608-7_18
2. Research Design Phase - Anonymization:
Use of photography techniques to facilitate research participants’ right to disappear
Author: Patricia Prieto Blanco
Short Description
For research in which images featuring participants’ faces will be produced or images through which participants could be identified, it is important to reflect very carefully on strategies of anonymisation before such images come to exist at all/ as research data. Certain photographic techniques can aid in producing images that do not need to be anonymised after the fact.
Problem Description
Anonymisation
Implementation Strategy
I decided to work with a macro-lens in order to protect participants' identity as such a lens allowed me to focus on a very small detail - something of particular relevance for my research question - while keeping participants' faces "blurry"/out of focus.
Data & Metrics
This best practice refers to photographing participants' belongings in their homes.
What Worked Well
This practice allows the researcher to generate images that do not need to be anonymised further.
Limitations & Challenges
The researcher needs a bit of training in photography and the neccessary equipment, and shooting with a macro lens is usually a slow process, so this technique may not work in context in which the shooting needs to be quick.
Prieto-Blanco, P. (2021). Afterword: Visual Research in Migration. (In)Visibilities, Participation, Discourses. In: Nikielska-Sekula, K., Desille, A. (eds) Visual Methodology in Migration Studies. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67608-7_18