The analogue journey method

In this chapter the authors – Emma Lazenby, a filmmaker and Karen Gray, a researcher – introduce the analogue journey method for analysis. The term ‘analogue’ has dual meanings, and both are relevant. An ‘analogue’ is a thing that is like or that is used to represent something else through the process of comparison or analogy. The analogue journey method is a novel creative analysis tool that can be used with almost any kind of qualitative or mixed methods research data, making sense of them by visualising them in the shape of a journey, and with the end goal of communicating this sense to others. The word ‘analogue’ is also, in contrast to ‘digital’, now commonly used to denote things whose function does not depend on electricity. The analogue journey method requires analogue tools, such as paper, pens, scissors. However, its results are intended to be translated into either words or images using any media to support wider and creative dissemination of research findings. The word ‘journey’ in the name indicates that it involves information being organised and presented in a form that, while linear, is mobile and mutable - open to change.

The method demands thoughtful connection and reconnection with the data. Its activities encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, opening up different perspectives or helping to form different constellations of information. As a process, it can also help to bring data and how we think about it into a relationship with time.