Analyzing user generated multimedia content
Dear AoIRers Since blog users and online community members are increasingly posting multimedia content and not only text, discourse analysis seems no longer sufficient to analyze this content. Therefore, I am looking for ways to classify and analyze images as such. One important aspect is certainly given by the context where the images are posted, but how can images be handled? I looked at ethnographic and semiotic approaches to get some background, but so far I could not find a suitable way to classify or analyze this type of content. Does anybody have experience in this area, or can anybody suggest a suitable approach for this problem? best wishes Nicole MA. Nicole Reinhold, Senior Research Consultant Philips Design nicole.reinhold@philips.com, http://www.design.philips.com
You might take a look at the paper "Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs", which Lois Scheidt and I wrote for the "Into the Blogosphere" collection a few years ago. Start with http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ Our understanding of how best to carry out that kind of (visual) content-analytic research has advanced since we wrote the paper, but the paper (and the collection as a whole...) is a good starting point. There is certainly a *lot* of work to be done w.r.t. multimedia content online. Best, --elijah On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Nicole Reinhold wrote:
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:14:12 +0100 From: Nicole Reinhold <nicole.reinhold@philips.com> Reply-To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Analyzing user generated multimedia content
Dear AoIRers
Since blog users and online community members are increasingly posting multimedia content and not only text, discourse analysis seems no longer sufficient to analyze this content. Therefore, I am looking for ways to classify and analyze images as such. One important aspect is certainly given by the context where the images are posted, but how can images be handled?
I looked at ethnographic and semiotic approaches to get some background, but so far I could not find a suitable way to classify or analyze this type of content. Does anybody have experience in this area, or can anybody suggest a suitable approach for this problem?
best wishes Nicole
MA. Nicole Reinhold, Senior Research Consultant Philips Design nicole.reinhold@philips.com, http://www.design.philips.com _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Analyzing images (still or moving) is at least as difficult and complex as analyzing written text. I do not think there exists a general way of analyzing or classifying imagery that makes any sense. Images are generally polysemous, so how to assess their "meaning" has been a battlefield in philosophy, art history, hermeneutics, semiotics, and psychology for centuries. We could list some widespread uses, however. I've tried to write about this in a recent book on Web media, but it is in Norwegian, unfortunately. Among typical uses in web pages, you find: description or demonstration (this is what it looks like), explanation (figures, maps, step-by-step illustrations), visual entry points (something to catch the eye and attract attention). There are many kinds of images. Photographs have a strong sense of being "proof", as they are mechanical recordings of light. This still holds true in the age of Photoshop: the vast majority of photos are never manipulated in post-production, and I will argue we still think of photos as "true". Drawings, on the other hand, are stylized, they can leave out unnecessary detail. Artists may also exaggerate detail (like in charicature, but also in the width of a river on a map), and draw the impossible. In commercial web design (as in other graphic design), the most common use of imagery is to attach meaning to a product or a company, what is known as "connotations" in semiotics. Today, Tiger Woods adorns the home page of accenture.com. He is not a consultant for the firm, nor do they do golf consulting (as far as I know). But they want to communicate that the values Woods represent also are the values of Accenture. His image is used as a metaphor. But then again, many photo amateurs post photos that are just "beautiful", according to mainstream photo aestethics. While being displays of harmony, color, lines, perspective, or emotion, these images of course also serve to demonstrate the skills of the photographer. Which again, means, I guess, that to analyze images all depends on what you are interested in, what your research problem is. Isn't that the case for analysis of language and writing too? I don't have a recipe for you, but you may find some examples of analyses I have done on http://fagerjord.no/rhetoricalconvergence --anders -- Anders Fagerjord, dr. art. Associate professor, Department of Media and Communcation, Unversity of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern N-0317 OSLO Norway http://www.media.uio.no http://fagerjord.no
Dera Anders - Very interesting topic here. Kress at least mentions a grammar of visual design which I think would be helpful (if it were possible). After one builds the grammar, then the analysis would be possible. Here is an interesting little book on how to read the visual from an art historical perspective. Don't think that's wanted here but at least shows an insertion point into the study of images from a cultural perspective. Dikovitskaya, M. (2005). Visual culture: the study of the visual after the cultural turn. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Kress, with a link: Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London, Routledge. Here's a link to one of his newer papers. http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Kress2/Kress2.html This went around on the list a while ago: VIRTUAL ART From Illusion to Immersion by Oliver Grau A Leonardo Book published by MIT Press (January 2003, ISBN 0-262-07241-6, 7 x 9, 360 pp., 89 illus) "Equally at home in art history, media history, and new media art, Grau situates immersive image spaces of new media within a rich historical landscape. A must-read for anyone interested in new media, visual culture, art history, cinema, and all other fields that use virtual images." (Lev Manovich, author of The Language of New Media) "Dismiss Oliver Grau's new book as a German multimedia theorist's scholarly treatise on art, and you'll miss a great read. Underneath its stald packaging, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion puts forth the sort of provocative insights that any Newromancer fan can appreciate." (WIRED, January 2003) CONTENT: Going beyond technical and ahistorical views of media art, Oliver Grau analyzes what is really new in media art by focusing on recent work against the backdrop of historic developments. Although many people view virtual and mixed realities as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive images. The search for illusionary visual space can be traced back to antiquity. Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and immersion and shows how each epoch used the technical means available to produce maximum illusion from Pompeiis Villa dei Misteri via baroque frescoes, panoramas, immersive cinema to the CAVE. He describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface design, agents, telepresence, and image evolution. Grau retells art history as media history, helping us to understand the phenomenon of immersion beyond the hype. GRAU also examines those characteristics of virtual reality that distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art and thus shows us what is really new in media art. His analysis draws on the work of contemporary artists and groups ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and Wolfgang Strauss. Grau offers not just a history of illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies throughout history and into the future. Quotes from the press: "A key book -- Oliver Grau's art historical study taps into the new virtual image spaces." (Frankfurter Allgemeine) "The parallels revealed are astounding." (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) Oliver Grau is a new-media art historian and lectures at the Department of Art History, Humboldt University in Berlin. He is a visiting professor at the Kunstuniversity Linz and is head of the German Science Foundation project on Immersive Art in Berlin, also he is developing the first international data base resource for virtual art. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis submitted, School of Environ. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tuesdays: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0438 23 33 44 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre
participants (4)
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Anders Fagerjord -
Denise N. Rall -
elw＠stderr.org -
Nicole Reinhold