Martin Bauer - Research and Intellectual Interests

Research and Intellectual Interests

Martin Bauer’s research portfolio includes the theory of resistance in social processes, Social representations of and public attitudes to science and technology, in particular genomics and modern biotechnology. The key question with which he is concerned is: how does public opinion influence the techno-scientific developments?

Martin Bauer is well known for developing the toblerone model of social representations with George Gaskell. He is also well known for his edited handbook with George Gaskell, Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook (2000), which provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to a broad range of research methods with the objective of clarifying procedures, good practice and public accountability. Following an introduction which discusses quality and quantity, and how these relate to issues of representation and knowledge interests in social research, the book is organized into four parts: · Part I covers different ways of collecting data and different types of data relating to text, image and sound: corpus construction, individual and group interviewing, narrative and episodic interviewing, video and film, and bemetology. · Part II introduces the main analytic approaches for text, image and sound: classical content analysis, argumentation, discourse, conversation analysis, rhetoric, semiotics, analysis of moving images, and of noise and music - each includes an introduction with examples and step-by-step advice on how to do it. · Part III covers computer-assisted analysis - including computer-assisted qualitative data analysis and key-word-in-context analysis. · Part IV addresses issues of good practice, looking at problems and fallacies in interpretation and develops quality criteria for qualitative research. This book provides researchers with the skills and knowledge to make the appropriate choices between different methods, types of data, and analytic procedures, and gives examples and criteria of good practice for each one. (publisher's description)