“If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty-first-century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates)” (Rheingold, 2008, pp 99-100)

His talk at the TED conference — viewable here — encapsulates some of the thrilling possibilities for democracy, collaboration, and (in my mind) health promotion in our century.

Map of Central City, New Orleans

Tons of community-based participatory research (CBPR) authors and practitioners raise the issue of defining community in CBPR. Several authors in Minkler’s edited book Community-Based Participatory Research for Health speak to the centrality of recognizing and defining community (2003). In Lawrence Green and colleagues’ “Guidelines for Participatory Research in Health Promotion”, they argue that the first question that must be asked of CBPR practitioners is: “Is the community of interest clearly described or defined?” Israel and colleagues write that the first key principle of CBPR is “CBPR recognizes community as a unit of identity”. So, what is community in the New Orleans VideoVoice project? Sometimes I know and sometimes I don’t.

As we walk through the process of recruitment for our project, I realize just how complex the idea of community really is. For example, when we began, it seemed as if this was a pretty cut and dry case of neighborhood = community. In fact, one of the rare pleasures of doing CBPR work in New Orleans, as far as I’ve experienced it, is that many people really do identify strongly with the neighborhoods where they live. Many have lived in the same home, some for several generations. People seem to know the people who live around them, to go to church with them, to have attended high school with them, and many even attend regular neighborhood committee meetings. Well, that was, until Katrina. So, it’s complicated.

When we began recruitment, we decided that “community” meant people who live and work in Central City. We have a map of the general boundaries, so we were looking for folks inside of these boundaries. As we made contact with more and more people, we began to realize that there are many people who have significant relationships with the Central City community but do not actually live or work there right now. Here are several examples of how the definition of community is simple on paper, but challenging in action.

After the city was evacuated and after enormous stretches of housing, particularly low-income housing, were destroyed, many of the neighborhood’s residents were forced to scatter across the Gulf States and even across the United States. Trusted institutions, community centers, and places of communion like parks and streets have been ruined and abandoned. So, our definition is time sensitive because so many were forced to leave and are still unable to come back. Do we include people who were a part of the neighborhood before? If so, how do we find these folks?

At Larry’s Church, Israelite Baptist Church, there are a lot of people in the congregation that have been long-time members of the community, but neither live nor work here. Some have ancient connections to the neighborhood. This is where they’ve been going to church since they were kids. This is where many generations of their family grew up, but they do not actually live or work in the neighborhood now and have not for a while. So, what do you do?

There is a high school just beyond the border of Central City. A small group, including a teacher and a few students that are 18 years plus, would like to join our effort. Seems to make sense, but it is outside the boarders and high schools tend to be discrete communities. But, so far, it has been hard for us to recruit young people, given our age requirements, and introducing this diversity to our group could be a significant addition. Maybe this is an opportunity to link these high school students to the community and although they may or may not have a significant relationship with Central City now, they probably will by the end of the project.

To Larry, the answer seemed obvious: he just knows. He has a sense for identifying people with a significant relationship to the neighborhood. It reminds me of the concept Malcolm Gladwell brings up in Blink. Sometimes our instincts are made up of an infinitely complex set of knowledge, much of it unconscious, which tells us in an instant what we are dealing with. This sense is so refined that we don’t even need to consciously or verbally delibaerate about it, we just know. Larry just knows because he has spent most of his life working and residing and organizing in the neighborhood. He knows nearly automatically, what it looks and seems and sounds like when someone has a significant relationship with the community. But, for me, an outside researcher, I can’t tell where this new boundary lies. Does it include the high school students or not? Does it include the guy that cooks at a bordering restaurant that seemed really interested in participating? It would be hard for me to explain this recruitment choice to academic colleagues, particularly when so much of this decision is based on the judgment of people who just know.

So, what does the literature tell us that might be helpful? Isreal and colleagues write that “Community is characterized by a sense of identification and emotional connection to other members, common symbol systems, shared values and norms, mutual (although not necessarily equal) influence, common interests, and commitment to meeting shared needs” (Isreal et al, In: Minkler Ed, 2003, pp 55). To me, a key aspect of this very very inclusive definition of community is the term “emotional connection”. I agree. But, how do we determine if this emotional connection exists? Is the Larry Campbell test ok? Or, is there some way that a person with less intimate understanding of the community can also make this determination? My gut tells me that there isn’t. That as I work and live and play more in Central City, maybe I too can develop a little bit of Larry-sense. Until then, I will have to rely on our community partners to know.

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. A new SSRC edited volume on culture, technology, and power in the digital era.  The book comes out of the Culture, Creativity, and Information Technology program, which focused on changing forms of cultural agency and the changing roles of cultural institutions.  Full text available free online (and for sale!)

The Bellagio Global Dialogues on Intellectual Property, or, How to Build an International Policy Research Field.  A report on Rockefeller Foundation IP Policy Initiatives, 2001-2006.

The Review Methods That I Used

The review began with a broad search for peer-reviewed and public health oriented literature that discusses participatory production of photography or video as an approach to community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects. I used the following keywords and phrases in my search: participatory video, participatory film, photovoice, photo novella, participatory research AND photography OR photo, and participatory research AND video OR film. My initial search included the following databases: Proquest, PubMed/Medline, ISI Web of Science, and CSA Illumina’s PsycINFO. All searches were limited to English-language literature that was published before January 2008. This preliminary search resulted in 135 individual publications appearing in 86 journals, newspapers, magazines, and books.
Limiting the results to peer-reviewed journals eliminated 52 publications, approximately half of which (24) were masters’ theses or doctoral dissertations. Upon further inspection of these articles, I found that the preponderance of this work was relevant to my topic of research. However, given my choice to include only peer-reviewed articles, it was necessary to exclude them from this review. The elimination of so many articles is perhaps a hint, also confirmed by Google searches, that these practices are more common than the peer-reviewed literature portends.

Next, I limited my results to only articles that dealt with participatory production of photographs and video. This eliminated 24 articles, all of which dealt with the consumption, but not production, of video or photo in participatory research efforts. Finally, because of my focus on public health literature, I eliminated any article that was not either published within a journal or article that included health as a key issue or word. This final refinement resulted in the exclusion of 7 articles. There are a total of 51 articles that qualified to be included in my literature review, 3 of which dealt with participatory video and 48 of which dealt with participatory photography.

What I found out

The three peer-reviewed articles identified through my search use participatory production of video in a very different manner. The first article by Chavez et al is based on a specific participatory video methodology, however the following articles by Freudenthal et al and Chandra and Batada do not allude to a specific video methodology or practice. They simply incorporate the tool as they saw fit.

In “A Bridge Between Communities: Video-Making Using Principles of Community-Based Participatory Research”, authors Chavez, Israel, and colleagues from the University of Michigan, and the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center partnered in the production of a participatory video (Chavez et al., 2004). As Chavez et al describe it, “The video examines the complexity of the concept of community, reviews the principles of CBPR, and documents the emergence of a partnership whose members work together to solve problems and develop solutions to health issues in their communities.” In this way, the video is a meta product: a participatory video about participatory research. The authors used the principles of CBPR in the video production process, following these six steps:

1. Engage the stakeholders
2. Solicit funding and informed consent
3. Create shared ownership
4. Build cross-cultural collaborations
5. Write the script together
6. Pull it all together – identify key themes, edit, and select music, quote, and still photographs.

Chavez et al found that the fusion of CBPR with video technology was an asset for inquiry as well as an exciting tool for publishing and disseminating findings.
Although this article is based on a single case study, and additional case studies could add validity to their how-to recommendations, it is the first to present a sophisticated exploration of the intersections in the practices of CBPR and participatory video production. In it, they present some of the opportunities and limitations in the use of video within CBPR projects. The authors propose that participatory video is a creative asset for inquiry in research and evaluation, a tool to publish results and disseminate findings to audiences not consistently acknowledged by research publications and/or the mass media. Chavez et al also warn that there are serious limitations, which also deserve further exploration, including: the invasion of participant privacy, the challenge of building participant trust and comfort with the video camera, the intensive time and cost requirements of video projects, confronting the ethics of omission and submission in the editing process, and overcoming the effects of the existing digital divide.

In their study of an effective school-based schistosomiasis prevention program in Tanzania, Freudenthal et al used an action research approach (2000). Through collaboration with educators, parents, and community members, the team created a set of educational interventions to reduce the transmission of schistosomiasis. One of the educational tools was video-recorded dramas, performed by 6th and 7th graders, and played for other community teens throughout the intervention. Freudenthal et al explain:

“Drama techniques, including role-plays, storytelling, dance, poetry and song are part of a performance tradition that has existed in African for a long time… Video-recording the dramas added another dimension as it provided an opportunity to the actors to see themselves perform and, equally important, it gave the actors and other audiences an opportunity to reflect and discuss issues related to schistosomiasis.” (pp 82).

In conclusion, the research team found that the educational attributes of the video contributed to an overall reduction in schistosomiasis rates. The authors argue that the participatory production of the film was a key factor in this impact, stating “To see members of ones own community addressing the problem of schistosomiasis has most likely a larger impact than to see complete strangers from another part of the world performing on video (Freudenthal, 2000).”

Chandra and Batada’s article explores stress and coping among 26 African American adolescents in Baltimore (2006). The group used a youth-driven and mixed-method approach to research and engaged in research translation and action through the youth-led production of a video for health promotion among teens. They explain, “The youth created the entire video—from script writing to film editing—and led discussions with groups of local community members, parents, and health advocates.” (pp 8). The article does not evaluate the video production process or impacts, but includes a web resource for researchers interested in engaging youth in participatory approaches to translation of their study findings.

Participatory use of video in verse: A prodigal child?

I will arise

and go to the people

I will say on to them

here is a video camera,

which can be used like a pencil

write your story in images with the aid

of a few mind visualization techniques.

Let us together re-enter your past by

representing your life in the present

On the third day after our meeting

The story of the street will no more be fleeting

neither will the street of stories strange to our feet

Our objective is to lift

the minds of our participants not with planks

or pranks children play but with role plays

that probe deep into their lives.

The transect walk will show us where

and how they live

Without leaving any aspect untouched.

Just before the cross from the old to the new

A show-back as feedback will be arranged

With the video camera at the back of the hall;

recording both the images on screen and

the reactions of those around.

Stuart Hall may be absent but his

theories can be heard so loud.

Just before it is done

The question like a dark night will pop

“where do you want this message taken”

“Who do you want as audience?”

Now that a part of the real is encoded,

it is now in reel-form.

It needs to be decoded with the context

of its production.

It has become a text that can be read, analyzed

and interpreted on the path to action.

This is not an extractive academic exercise

but a performative, life transforming engagement

meant to bring a little change.

I will arise

and go back to the editing room

with voices of the poor

and poor images shot with hand-held

video cameras without tri-pods.

At the table, fingers would say to the buttons

wipe out ambiguity but ensure

the poverty on the streets is preserved

as a re-presentation of the lives of the participants

whose lives the video camera facilitated

their transformation by creating a forum

for introspection and reflection.

Once the funders are fed

with images and sounds of the unfed,

this project must return to the

home of the street children

who are still waiting for answers

that brought new questions

about the role of technology

in community story construction.

© Kole Ade Odutola

University of Florida

]]> http://video-voice.org/blog/2008/01/14/poem-about-participatory-video-in-kenya/feed/ http://video-voice.org/blog/2007/12/06/excerpt-from-the-participatory-media-guidebook-bookmarking/ http://video-voice.org/blog/2007/12/06/excerpt-from-the-participatory-media-guidebook-bookmarking/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:02:50 +0000 Caricia Catalani http://video-voice.org/blog/2007/12/06/excerpt-from-the-participatory-media-guidebook-bookmarking/ Have you ever created a word or excel document with a bunch of website addresses, just so you wouldn’t forget them all? Have you ever sent a friend or colleague a bunch of links that you ran across, because you knew it was right up their alley? Is it getting hard for you to manage the hundreds of bookmarks that you saved on browser? Well… then you were working a lot harder than you have to! Online bookmarking makes all of this easier. And, as a doctoral student that spends a lot of time finding resources on the web, this has helped me to stay sane… and even be helpful to other researchers in my field.

Here is an excerpt by Lisa Pickoff-White from our Participatory Media Guidebook, which I describe in the last blog, explaining what bookmarking is and how to use it to make your life easier.

Definition
Bookmarking is a system where people work together to bring together articles and works throughout the Internet by tagging them. For example, people can vote on something if it is informative as a suggestion for others to read it, or add it to a list of articles on the same topic.

My Favorite Examples
Del.icio.us, Digg

Why use it?
Sites such as Digg receive about 20 million hits a month. People who find something via social bookmarking are also more likely to trust the source, because it has been pre-approved by a human, instead of a list generated by a search engine. It’s also any easy way for people to check out what their friends are reading, and stumble across your site that way.

Sites such as Del.icio.us can be really helpful in saving, organizing, managing, and categorizing all of the websites that you want to remember. It’s easy to share tags through digg and find key websites by looking at others’ use of the same tag. Del.icio.us also allows you to see all of your bookmarks online, so you can access them and add to them from any computer.

Use Cases: Videovoice Example
Check out Caricia’s del.icio.us tag on all of the websites on “videovoice” that she has come across during the last 5 months. Here is a tag cloud of all her tags, including videovoice and dozens more, that she has used.

How to use
Sign up of an account at one of the social bookmarking sites above. Most of them will insert a toolbar, so whenever you see something relevant to your organization, tag-it!

Helpful/Interesting Links

• A general review of Social Bookmarking Tools (from D-Lib Magazine)
• Digg’s failing democracy (from the Download Squad)

Shirley White, the editor and primary author of the book “Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Empower” (2003), has taught participatory video methods since the 1970s. She is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communications at Cornell University.

For a youngster like myself, I find it hard to fathom participatory video in the days before cheap and easy to operate digital cameras, digital video tape that costs about 5-cents per minute, digital editing programs that are free on most computers, and instant connection to millions of viewers for free through online video sharing sites. You have to hand it to Professor White. If you are looking for a book that can provide you with first-person experiences of participatory film, “Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Empower” does just that. The book is mostly descriptive and focused on the use of participatory video as a community development strategy in resource-poor environments.

However, as a researcher and as a person immersed in a very different technological world, I found myself a little disappointed. Although the book was published in 2003, there is really no mention of the changes that I mention above–changes that are monumental in the world of participatory video and changes that result in millions of non-professionals around the world engaging in digital storytelling. Just this month, people in Burma broadcast videos from mobile phones and cheap cameras, effectively leaping over the media black out and revealing human rights abuses to the world. The same is happening in Pakistan. And in China. And the United States. Recognizing this new and nearly global use of technology, Witness launched HUB–the first participatory media site for human rights.

Professor White, a participatory video champion during much more challenging time, nostalgically confesses: “I am still using my decade-old VHS camera and editing system.” Wow!

And, now, I will have to admit my graduate student bias around rigor and research. “Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Empower” makes many claims about participatory video, most of which I agree with whole-heartedly, but it is not enough to say that it is “transformative” and “empowering.” As a student of science, my ability to believe has been forever ruined by this mantra: Prove it. Professor White and her colleagues do not spend much time referring to practitioners, philosophers, or scholars who spent most of their lives exploring, defining, and analyzing these concepts–people like Paulo Freire and his ideas around empowerment. And they do not spend much time describing what exactly they mean by, for example, empowerment. This word is used a lot in everyday conversations, among people fighting oppression, in political contexts, nearly everywhere… But, what does it mean? What does it not mean? Does empowerment mean that you are a better person? Does it mean that you are free from the constraints of oppression? Does it mean that you are DOING something to change your world? What does it mean to say that participatory video empowers? And, does it really? If so, then show me because my unimaginative scientific brain is dying to see the evidence! If so, then this is one of the biggest breakthroughs, well, ever. If the evidence already exists, then I can retire my dissertation project now.

Professor White’s book is an incredible contribution to practitioners of participatory video. It is one of perhaps 3-4 books written on this subject; an early adapter extraordinaire that is sure to be followed by a flood of books on participatory video in the coming years! Professor White’s book reminds us that we are arriving at a truly miraculous era of participatory media and culture. We have a lot to be thankful for because it has never been easier to collaborate, produce, and distribute videos with communities across the globe.

“A vivid survey, Aufderheide’s book reminds us how crucial content and purpose are to the power and appeal of documentaries. When other films help us escape the world, these films return us to it with clarity and passion. This book lets us see how that is so.”

— Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, Professor of Cinema and Director of the Graduate Program, San Francisco State University

Visit the Center for Social Media’s website to read an excerpt.

Documentary Film is available at Amazon.com.

Just to begin writing in this blog, I feel like a lot of introductions are necessary. Not just people, but also ideas. Idea 1, meet idea 2. This kind of meet and greet is happening in my head all of the time.

So, here is a new idea to participatory research and a well known idea to participatory media. I have a bit of a crush on this idea and feel pretty proud to introduce it around.

******

Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor and the author of the already well revered book “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,” (available in full) has some incredible observations of interest to anyone wondering about participatory media or participatory research. Or… participatory anything.

Benkler describes a major global shift in the production and exchange of information, knowledge, and culture. Like the critical theorists, Benkler agrees that the market through which these intangibles emerge has profound influence on human freedom and development.

Through his observations on the trend of economic change enabled by the affordability and rise of a networked, computer-mediated communications environment, Benkler develops the concept of a networked information economy. The network information economy, as he observes, is a

“system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through wildly distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies.” (Benkler 2006, p. 3)

By decentralization, Benkler is referring to the disappearance of economic middlemen, those traditional economic brokers that control the valve at the end of market bottlenecks because of their unique ownership of the means of production. For example, if you wanted to be a singer twenty years ago, you would need to have your music embraced by a major record company. They alone had the power to distribute your songs through contract deals with music broadcasters and retailers. Today, the barrier to entering cultural economies like music is substantially lower and although not everyone can afford access to a computer with Internet connection, this is all it takes to share your song with hundreds of thousands of people.

One of the “market strategies” that Benkler refers to is propriety, or ownership of an informational good. Sole ownership does not fit into the networked information economy, when goods are commonly produced by hundreds of thousands of volunteers brought together from all corners of the globe through network technology. For example, Wikipedia is now the most serious competitor to encyclopedia makers. Forty years ago, you had to buy a set of encyclopedias for your home or hope that you had access to a subsidized public library to access this wealth of information. Today, Wikipedia gives hundreds of thousands of people from around the world free access to information production and consumption. More than 75,000 active writers, working on nearly 9 million articles in more than 250 languages, produce Wikipedia (statistics). This is, in effect, the world’s largest participatory research project.

Benkler’s theories on the networked information economy reveal an entirely new vision of an economy in which participatory production of information, knowledge, and culture are not only possible but also given wings. Whether we know it or not, our work in participatory media and community-based participatory research will be profoundly impacted by the networked information economy.