METHODS FOR STUDYING TEXTS (WRITTEN, IMAGES, SOUND)
| What are you planning on doing? | Here’s an academic term for that. |
| Are you thinking about how images (or non-musical sounds) function in a text? | Semiotic analysis |
| Are you thinking about how images (or non-musical sounds) function in a place? | Geo-semiotic analysis |
| Are you counting images, movement, sound, word or phrases? | Content analysis |
| Are you thinking about how words (written or spoken) function in a text? | Discourse analysis |
| Are you tracing the history of specific words in a text? | Etymological analysis |
| Are you looking at the ways in which a specific set of texts tells stories or myths? | Narrative analysis |
| Are you analysing film? | Film analysis |
| Are you analysing music, using formal language such as pitch, melody, and harmony? | Musicological analysis |
| Are you analysing dance? | Dance analysis |
| Are you analysing a live performance that is not dance, such as sports event or an exhibit? | Performance analysis |
| Are you concentrating on movement within a performance? | Movement analysis |
| Are you analysing the spoken or unspoken values a text seems to be supporting? | Ideology critique |
| Are you analysing how gender is represented? | Gender/feminist critique |
| Analysing how race is represented? | Critical race analysis |
| Analysing how sexuality is represented? | Queer theory analysis |
| Analysing how economic conditions are represented? | Class analysis |
| Analysing how “normal” and “abnormal” bodies are represented? | Disability analysis |
| Analysing how certain social groups (usually subcultural) are represented? | Sociological analysis |
| Analysing the the unconscious in the form of fantasy, desire, or imagination? | Psychoanalytic critique |
| Analysing how history is represented in a text? | Historiographic analysis |
| Analysing body-oriented experiences while encountering or creating a text? | Phenomenological analysis |
| Analysing body-oriented experiences while encountering a place? | Rhythmanalysis |
METHODS: CONTEXTS
| What are you planning on doing? | Here’s an academic term for that. |
| Analysing the budgets, marketing, revenues, or converged markets of a text? | Market research analysis |
| Exploring how individuals within institutions or businesses work together to produce something? | Organizational analysis |
| Analysing legal issues surrounding the production, consumption, circulation or re-use something? | Legal analysis |
| Are you mapping out the relationships between linked images, words, scenes, players, or users? (usually in a digital text like a web site or a video game) | Network analysis |
| Considering the nature of censorship, privacy or public influence of a text? | Political economy analysis |
| Considering the nature of play in a particular environment? | Ludology analysis |
| Comparing multiple texts in the same genre (e.g. soap operas, musicals, slasher films? | Genre analysis |
| Comparing multiple texts by the same writer or director? | Auteur analysis |
| Comparing multiple texts that all feature the same performer? | Star or celebrity analysis |
| Comparing texts from different cultures? | Trans-cultural comparison |
| Comparing texts from different time periods? | Trans-historical comparison |
METHODS: PEOPLE
| What are you planning on doing? Here’s an academic term for | |
| Studying audience reactions to a text? | Audience analysis |
| Speaking with audience or community members one-on-one about their reactions to a text or an environment? | Polling (simple answers), Interviews (complex answers) |
| Speaking with audience members in small groups about their reactions to a text or an environment? | Focus group administration |
| Asking audience members to respond in writing about their reactions to a text or an environment? | Questionnaire administration |
| Observing people as they interact with one another in a particular environment? | Participant observation |
| Observing people as they interact with one another in an environment, over a significant period of time? | Anthropological observation |
| Observing people over a significant period of time as they interact in an environment, and considering how your presence might be affecting their behaviour? | Ethnographic observation |
| Observing people over a significant period of time in an environment where you consider yourself an active participant or member of the group? | Auto-ethnographic observation |
| Recording your personal reactions and recollections regarding a text or an environment? | Personal memoir |
| Observing how users interact with a text, such as a game or web site, while in their natural environment (their bedroom, the classroom, etc.)? | User experience analysis |
| Creating specific test environments or experiments to observe how users interact with a specific (usually digital) text, such as a game or a web site? | User testing (can be
administered one-on-one or in groups) |