ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will outline a social semiotic-based method to studying military image banks. Rose (2012: 16-17) offers three criteria that serve as a litmus test for a critical visual methodology: (1) it must take images seriously and “look very carefully at visual images . . . because they are not entirely reducible to their context . . . and have their own effects”; (2) it must explicitly attend to “the social conditions and effects of visual objects”; and (3) it must invite consideration of the researchers own practices of looking at images. Together these three criteria are suggestive of an approach to studying images that is simultaneously empirical, material and reflexive. A social semiotic approach meets these criteria because it emphasizes systemic description, the social nature of communication and engagement through a critical and historical approach to semiosis.
