In queste giornate sarò impegnato al convegno annuale della International Visual Sociology Association. IVSA 2010 si tiene a Bologna, nella mia Alma Mater, lì, a Scienze Politiche, che è stata per alcuni anni (di formazione, prima, e di insegnamento – a contratto – poi) la mia casa.

Il tema è Thinking, Doing and Publishing Visual Research: The State of the Field? e abbiamo pensato di proporre un panel che ha per titolo: User Generated Visual: SNS and online worlds. Visual research methods

L’idea è questa:

Internet in itself is already a visually relevant phenomenon. The development of Social Network Sites and online worlds (such as Second Life) is characterised by the use of images and by the way in which users generate spontaneously even iconic contents.

So the internet is a relevant place of contemporary experience and of visual analysis of individual and group life-experience.

The net offers the unmissable chance of gaining useful information for sociological research in a non directive way. In fact users share contents and materials and are “naturally” inclined to share their experiences and everyday lives.

The web is suitable, from one hand, for the specific type of research characterising sociology on images: the analysis of contemporary collective imagery, consumption’s processes, different forms of advertising, the use of images and the construction of identity and social networked relations, etc.

On the other hand the web makes possible also the research with images: images created by users – researchers and subjects of research – could be used for photo elicitation interviews, also inworld.

This panel looks for papers based on research “in the field” about Social Network Sites (such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc.) and online worlds (such as SecondLife, World of Warcraft, etc.), to prove the possible use of visual approaches to study the web, an even more important field in socio-communicative research.

So proposals have to highlight:

1. the methodological support that could be provided by the web to Visual Sociology and to sociological research;
2. the benefit that Visual Sociology could provide to the analysis of the web as “inhabited” environment and privileged place of observation of contemporary experience.

Se volete sapere cosa ne è uscito potete passare a trovarci o leggere qui 🙂

(l’immagine è un omaggio a Doug Harper e a tutti gli amici della visual con cui abbiamo fatto un pezzo di strada assieme)