This content analysis examined how the authors of 114 peer-reviewed journal articles explained their empirical approaches to visual rhetoric scholarship. The authors content analysis sought to answer the question: how do scholars engage with the material dimensions of visual culture, specifically in terms of artifact selection and reporting data collection procedures? The answers to this question, the authors argue, are needed urgently as visual rhetoric research continues to expand because inconsistent reporting will hinder replicability and the reader’s access to the author’s argument. The authors use the findings of their content analysis to surface the implicit norms of empirical visual rhetoric research and to develop recommendations for reporting visual data collection procedures.

This content analysis examined how the authors of 114 peer-reviewed journal articles explained their empirical approaches to visual rhetoric scholarship. Our content analysis sought to answer the question: how do scholars engage with the material dimensions of visual culture, specifically in terms of artifact selection and reporting data collection procedures? The answers to this question, we argue, are needed urgently as visual rhetoric research continues to expand because inconsistent reporting will hinder replicability and the reader’s access to the author’s argument. We use the findings of our content analysis to surface the implicit norms of empirical visual rhetoric research and to develop recommendations for reporting visual data collection procedures.