Reflexiones conceptuales y metodológicas sobre análisis y producción audiovisual en Sociología

Abstract

The audio-visual has deserved few attention in social research, even in fields of knowledge specially iconized where social representations are constructed fundamentally from the visual speeches transmitted in the mediapolis. The image has been generally used in sociology to illustrate texts and not so much as document to analyze and interpret. It is necessary to integrate the audio-visual documents as primary sources of research, since without them it is impossible to analyze and understand numerous phenomena of the contemporary society. This analytical-comprehensive potential of the audio-visual sources derives from its discursive nature and the mechanisms of production of sense that they incorporate. In this article we think over some aspects of the analysis and the audio-visual production as a conceptual and methodological tool of sociology: the use of visual sources in research; the multidisciplinary implications of the analysis of the visual speech to establish how the meaning is constructed (how a social fact is visualized and how other forms can be constructed of visuality); or the audio-visual image in the construction of the otherness. But the audio-visual, besides being a source and analytical tool in the sociological task, also constitutes an important tool of social intervention in our field. In this respect, the audio-visual production is probably the newer aspect we can incorporate in our sociological work. Visual sociology has almost always approached problems associated with power in which we can now consider to control ourselves constructing other forms of visuality from the actors-subjects who are in situation of underotherness. The audio-visual sociological production can be constructed as a specific alternative space of social intervention that helps transform the reality incorporating the empathic perspective and the vision of the implied actors themselves, normally absent in the speeches established from the power. This construction of a new alternative speech from the perspective of the actor, allows the strengthening and improvement of his autoimage, in a process of identity reconstruction that makes him see himself as a real social actor with capacity of action, intervention and certain exercise of power. These have been the results of our experiences in the research group GIEMIC at Castilla-La Mancha University.