Visual Research Data

What legal and ethical considerations should be taken into account when creating, analysing, sharing, and reusing visuals as research data? 

Visual data are increasingly central to social research. Photos, videos, screenshots, and other visual materials can offer rich insights into social life, culture, and everyday practices. At the same time, making visual data open raises specific ethical, legal, and methodological challenges that cannot be addressed by applying generic open data principles alone. Visual data raises distinctive challenges for open data practices. They are highly context-dependent and difficult to anonymize.  Once shared openly, visual materials can also be easily reinterpreted, reused, or amplified, increasing the risk of misrepresentation or unintended harm. Therefore, visual data cannot be treated like any other research data. Responsible openness requires early, reflexive, and context-sensitive decisions that balance transparency, accessibility, and ethical responsibility. 

We developed several materials to address these challenges and support responsible, context-sensitive open data practices in visual social research.  

We started with the CodeVis project (Code of Conduct for Open Data Practices in Visual Social Research), funded by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. As part of the project, we developed the Recommendations for Open Data Practices in Visual Social Research and organised several workshops, the slides from which are available here. 

Then, as part of its follow-up project, ODSS-PROV – Open Data, Shared Standards: Promoting Adequate Open Data Practices in Visual Social Research, funded by swissuniversities, we made these Recommendations more widely accessible and easier to use through an interactive website: codevis.org. This platform is designed to help researchers navigate practical decisions about open data in visual social research throughout the research process, from the conceptual phase to data reuse. We also created videos, added dedicated sections to the Knowledge Base, and developed several FAQs on the topic. 

FAQS

3.4.1-2 If a participant creates a copyrighted work during a research project, what should the project’s researchers determine? 

They should determine whether the participant has transferred copyright or granted permission for the storage, sharing, and reuse of their work.

If no transfer of copyright has been agreed, participants remain the rights holders of any copyrighted works they create during the project, unless it can be implicitly established that the rights were transferred for the purposes of the project. Because this can be difficult to prove in the event of a dispute, it is recommended to establish a clear, written transfer of rights to the project institution(s), allowing researchers to use and share the research data.

However, transferring copyright does not change authorship: the author always remains the author of their copyrighted work, even when the economic rights have been transferred.

4.1.3-5 What are two ways in which the use of images, such as visual data, can cause reputational harm? 

A photograph shared outside its original or intended context can harm the reputation of both the person depicted and the person who took the photograph, but in different ways:

For the person depicted: the decontextualisation of the image may harm their reputation and raise issues related to personality rights and privacy. Researchers should consider this before sharing research data.

For the photographer: a modification of the photo (or any copyrighted work) or its decontextualisation may affect their author’s reputation and moral rights under copyright law.

KNOWLEDGEBASE

Find more detailed information on various aspects regarding publishing contracts and the second publication right:

 

TRAINING

 

Training Catalogue

Inside the training catalogue you can find a vast selection of training topics and formats, among which also a course on “Publishing academic articles as Open Access and second publication right” (p. 15).

Training Catalogue

ADVISING

 

For any questions please do not hesitate to contact us either by e-mail (info@ccdigitallaw.ch) or phone (+41 58 666 49 30).

EXTERNAL RESOURCES

CodeVis materials:

  • Lobinger, K., Picco-Schwendener, A., Farace Marazza, S., & Sibio, P. (2025). Recommendations for open data practices in visual social research. In pursuit of a code of conduct (Version 1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17175414
  • Platform conceptualized to help researchers navigate practical decisions about open data in visual social research  across the research process, from the conceptual phase to data reuse: https://codevis.org.

Other resources:

  • Jesse Fox, Katy E Pearce, Adrienne L Massanari, Julius Matthew Riles, Łukasz Szulc, Yerina S Ranjit, Filippo Trevisan, Cheryll Ruth R Soriano, Jessica Vitak, Payal Arora, Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, Meryl Alper, Andrew Gambino, Carmen Gonzalez, Teresa Lynch, Lillie D Williamson, Amy L. Gonzales, Open Science, Closed Doors? Countering Marginalization through an Agenda for Ethical, Inclusive Research in Communication, Journal of Communication, Volume 71, Issue 5, October 2021, Pages 764-784, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab029
  • Lobinger, K., Lucchesi, F., & Tarnutzer, S. (2024). Visualized relationships (ViRe) – Image type overview and short descriptions. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10557227
  • Lobinger, K., Lucchesi, F., & Tarnutzer, S. (n.d.). Pair and individual interviews with couples and friends in Switzerland (ViRe) (Version 1.0) [Dataset]. FORS data service. https://doi.org/10.48573/FRMK-2S13
  • Tarnutzer, S., Lobinger, K., & Lucchesi, F. (2024). Image types revisited. A texto-material approach for creating image types. Studies in Communication Sciences, 24(1), 103–121. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2024.01.3894
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