Analysing Photographs in Counter Culture

Abstract

This case study is focused on the analysis of visual data. The data are a series of my photographs of food counters in shops and restaurants in and around Dublin city, Ireland. The photographs depict the city as it is, modern, globalised, affluent, and sophisticated. The dataset is used here to explain my four-stage approach to data analysis (Quinlan, 2011a, Quinlan et al., 2015). The four stages in data analysis are as follows: Stage 1 is description, the researcher describes what they see in the data; Stage 2 is interpretation, the researcher interprets what they see in the data, the researcher explains what the data mean; Stage 3 is conclusion, the researcher draws conclusions from the data; and in the fourth stage, the researcher theorises the data. Using the Counter Culture dataset, I explain in detail each of these four stages in data analysis. The dataset files are accompanied by a Teaching Guide and a Student Guide.