Comics-Based Thematic Analysis (Poster 7)

• In Event: Themes Without Coding: Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis

Abstract

This proposed poster for the session “Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis” explores how thematic analysis can be done through the creation of comics. As many have argued, arts-based research (e.g., Leavy, 2015) enlarge our differing cognitive ways of understanding the world. Artist-researchers have shown that the possibilities for representation, for structuring our cognition using forms beyond numbers and propositions, are nearly limitless (E. Eisner, 1997). The comics form—images in panels, speech balloons, word art—presents readers a larger portion of the lifeworld than text alone.

For the analyst of qualitative research data, comics can be particularly useful in the generation and presentation of themes. Comics demand of their creators particular sets of decisions. As McCloud (2006) outlines it, comics creators make five basic decisions in creating a comic. They select the moment to portray out of all the moments within an action, event, or life; they make a choice about frame, like a camera’s viewfinder; they choose the image, selecting visual elements and symbols that convey information about people, places, actions, objects, and sensory stimuli; they choose words, including dialogue, narration and sounds; and finally, they make choices about how images and words flow around the larger page.

Traditional qualitative research requires similar choices for analysts. Our “moments” come in broader scales than the fraction of a second that a camera or drawing freezes—multi-second actions, entire events, or general social dynamics. We include or exclude events, describing them from one angle, just like comics’ framing. We certainly use a lot of words, and occasionally we include an image or two—a chart or table, maybe a photograph. And the flow in a comic is somewhat like the flow of academic prose, with considerations of chronology, transition, and themes. So how does the act of creating a comic translate to the generation of themes about qualitative data?

In this poster session, I will present a comic page representing an oral history about the educational experiences of a man named Jack, who up in rural Appalachia during the Depression. The comic presented details how his precocious, gifted behavior was managed by teachers of that time and place. I will explain how the affordances of comics (Kuttner et al., 2018) aided me in generating and developing the themes growing out of the oral history.

Author

• Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower, Virginia Tech