Prospects for the Social Science Film in CMS

Researching visual culture has become very popular among social scientists in recent years. However, this paper aims to explore one of the less frequently discussed aspects of this visual turn: the possibilities for research being produced and communicated via film (and not through text) within critical organizational research. We seek to contribute to a new theoretical foundation for the communication of research findings via film, while also offering one of our own productions of a social science film as an illustrative case study. For many researchers, especially in broadly qualitative and ethnographic work, the distinction between ‘doing research’ and ‘making films’ is increasingly blurred. We argue, therefore, that it is now time to reconsider how organization studies can incorporate social science films into the discipline as forms of research in their own right. Thus we advocate social science films sharing a similar status to the journal paper in terms of data, method, results and publication.