Comics As Method and Medium: Case Studies in Social Science Research

In recent years, researchers have started to explore the significant potential of comics within qualitative social science research, employing multimodal and sequential methods for data elicitation, collection, analysis, and dissemination. From a methodological perspective, this raises important questions about how qualitative practices can be translated into visual forms and the impact this has on the discourse produced.

This proposal brings forward two distinct examples of research involving comics, and resulted in two published graphic novels, highlighting the different roles that comics can assume within social science research. The first example focuses on comics-based research, specifically a study on pancreatic conditions that employed 12 in-depth interviews in Italy. In this case, comics were not just a medium of dissemination but actively engaged participants and researchers in the co-construction of meaning, making the sequential and multimodal nature of comics an essential component of the qualitative methodology.

The second example, on the other hand, concerns research-based comics, a project that explored body donation through 75 in-depth interviews, later transformed into a published graphic novel. Here, the role of comics was primarily in the dissemination phase, where the research findings were translated into a visual format to communicate the complex and sensitive subject matter to a broader audience.

By contrasting these two examples, this presentation will reflect on the various functions that comics can fulfill in social scientific research—from being an active method integrated into the research design, to serving as a powerful tool for sharing findings. It will also consider how comics, in both cases, challenge traditional boundaries of academic communication and offer new opportunities for the representation of social realities. At the same time, the proposal will address the ethical and methodological challenges inherent in using comics, including the risks of reinforcing stereotypes or misrepresenting complex social phenomena.