-Listen to Dr. Clifton Evers discuss how he communicated his study of surf culture, using GoPro cameras to
better capture and understand affects, emotion, and masculinity. Evers offers a detailed example of how his
research question and theoretical interests guide both his methodological choices and his approach to writing.
Pay particular attention to how he addresses the challenge of capturing and communicating the emotional and
visceral. [20:00-27:00 minutes] “When you see footage, I always go, ‘[w]hat happened in between here and
here?’ All the dull, mundane, boring stuff is taken out, and this particularly happens with surfing and sports
stuff. I want all that left in; the bobbing up and down for an hour and the sheer look of boredom on some of the
participants’ faces.
Interview with Clifton Evers, Newcastle University (Links to an external site.)
-Listen to Dr. Madison Van Oort and Dr. Kyle Green discuss how they used a mix of two qualitative approaches
— discourse and semiotic analysis — to analyze advertisements broadcast during the 2010 Super Bowl. Pay
particular attention to their discussion of how they embraced the subjectivity and creativity possible when
conducting qualitative analysis to better reveal cultural messages and trends. [3:00-8:00 minutes & 13:00-
20:20 & 23:00-28:30]
“Semiotic analysis is never objective and it is never absolute. I don’t think that we were ever claiming that we
were taking an objective approach. Instead, I think we just kind of came at it as two sociologists with somewhat
similar, but also somewhat different, academic training and with eyes toward different kinds of signs and
symbols.”