Visual sociology

Luc Pauwels suggests that the framework is based on the origin and nature of visuals, research focus and design, and format and purpose.

Film and video cameras are particularly well suited as data gathering technologies for experiments and small group interactions, classroom studies, ethnography, participant observation, oral history, the use of urban space, etc.

For instance, the raised eyebrow, the wave of a hand, the blink of an eye might convert the apparent meaning of words into their opposite, convey irony, sarcasm, or contradiction.

[2] Visual recordings have long been employed by natural scientists because they make it possible to speed up, slow down, repeat, stop, and zoom in on things of interest.

In this case the images can be taken specially by the researcher with the idea of using them to elicit information, they can belong to the subject, for example family photographs or movies, or they can be gathered from other sources including archives, newspaper and television morgues, or corporate collections.

The first use of photo voice was by Wang and Burris (published in 1994), where they defined it as "a method through which knowledge would be generated by people who were normally passive objects in the research process.

Art, photographs, film, video, fonts, advertisements, computer icons, landscape, architecture, machines, fashion, makeup, hair style, facial expressions, tattoos, and so on are parts of the complex visual communication system produced by members of societies.

Visual sociology also requires the development of new forms—for example, data driven computer graphics to represent complex relationships e.g., changing social networks over time, the primitive accumulation of capital, the flow of labor, relations between theory and practice.