Representing Identities - Media Theory

The guy I studied was David Gauntlett; who is the professor of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster, and his theory and the method he used to represent identities. His method consisted of getting the general public to create things as a way of exploring specific experiences and specific identities.

It consists of using visual methods such as drawings,collages and videos to get the brain thinking in a different way compared to using methods such as focus groups and interviews as the visual ways are more hands on to hope that the results will be more accurate and honest.

David Gauntlett states that humans are always thinking of more than one thing such as food, drink, work and gossip. So therefore for a researcher to focus on just one area it won't be as meaningful or descriptive compared to using creative methods which will allow people to express their own stories in a longer time period, it means you will get more meaningful results.

The video also states that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty stated that we have a imbodied experience, we live in bodies and experience the world in bodies. And therefore from this it states that using research methods which will use our bodies to make thing will lead to a more realistic response.

From this David Gauntlett decided to collaborate with Lego Play which is an consultancy process which uses lego in order to explore issues in the organisations. So David Gauntlett used it for social research. The research process consisted of the participants getting to use lego - thinking and building in metaphors (For example to build a creature) - which will lead to building identities (For example then build this creature in to what you feel like on Friday morning). So the person would go from creating something literally to going to a feeling. And from this you would gradually get deeper until you say build a model of your own identity. So David Gauntlett states that you will get more from this representation of the persons' identity as it can be represented as a whole instead of a list and then from this you would add influences that they personally have.

This process would be conducted with a variety of people from different backgrounds, such as architects,   unemployed, charity managers, students, norweigan students. This is so that you get a diverse spread of people not to just group and stereotype them. The models will allow these groups to express themself personally.

This method could be used for many things such as experiences in specific areas such as hospitals, schools or an illness. So for this example it was used to explore how people think about their own self-identity.