Texts and Images as Data in Qualitative Social Research: Proposing a Common Methodological Approach

Abstract

Images and texts, their qualities as empirical data, and their entanglements, have been the object of methodological and theoretical debates in social scientific research for a few decades now. Scholars have argued that images and texts are fundamentally different to the point of being incommensurable. Contrary to this line of reasoning, this paper suggests that images and texts are similar enough to be studied within the same framework, that of semiotics, understood as a non-reductive approach to the socio-cultural making of aesthetics, performances, and meanings in multi-media arrangements. Unfolding this argument, I do not suggest that ‘images are like texts,’ but instead propose that ‘texts are like images.’ Doing so, I discuss a few of the most frequently assumed properties of images, and how these may apply to texts. As such, this article sets the theoretical perimeters for more specific methodical approaches in social scientific research.