Husband/wife team Anthony Veneziale and Caricia Catalani take their talents and give voice to those in need.

Guideposts Magazine: Inspiring Stories, Inspiring People

By Jen MacNeil
New York, New York
When Anthony Veneziale and Caricia Catalani got married last spring, they wanted to find a way to join not just their lives but their careers. Not an easy feat when he’s a filmmaker and producer and she’s working on a doctorate in public health. They also wanted to use their talents to help empower others.

Read the article

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)

After months of reading, analyzing, discussing, blogging, and tagging, we are happy to announce our final project: The Participatory Media Guidebook.

We created the Participatory Media Guidebook to introduce a range of participatory media tools for collective action to activists and social justice organizations around the world. The guide discussed what tools to use and when to use them. It is a wiki, so it will always be evolving and updating. Please participate by adding your own expertise on how to use new media to change the world.

New media offer an incredibly unique and new opportunity to address our current public health crisis. There are countless examples of this already happening with enormous success around the world. Sharing videos about condoms online can educate people in India about HIV, despite the mass media ban on such conversations. Blogging about outbreaks can get information about deadly epidemics to the World Health Organization well before a national government would admit to having a problem that might discourage tourist from coming to their coasts. Social networking sites can facilitate community organizing and mobilization of diasporas, such as Mexican migrant workers, that would otherwise not have the numbers to be a political force to demand healthy working conditions or access to medical treatment.

Caricia Catalani

For those of you that are already familiar, this blog may not be of much interest to you. But, for the novice, here is an introduction to YouTube, including the pros/cons of using it, how to upload participatory videos, and how to compare it to other video sharing sites.

Founded in February 2005, YouTube was created to watch and share original videos worldwide. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

YouTube.com is the most popular video-sharing site on the web. Popular YouTube.com videos are shared and viewed hundreds of thousands of times. The most popular videos tend to be short, between 1 and 3 minutes long, although longer videos can be uploaded. Although viral comedies have been the most popular YouTube.com videos, the 2008 Presidential elections has provoked a variety of more politically-oriented uses of YouTube that range from serious questions for party nominees to satirical music videos to experimental political advertisements.

YouTube has a variety of viewing sizes, so that it is accessible through a range of bandwidths. Videos uploaded onto YouTube can take advantage of their sizeable hosting space and post the videos directly into their own websites, blogs, and social networking sites. This is difficult and expensive to achieve in-house, without the threat of overwhelming your web hosting service and causing a system crash if too many people attempt to view the video simultaneously.

YouTube may not be preferable for sensitive content due to its large viewership, the author’s inability to control content distribution, and the viewer’s ability to post unedited and sometimes insensitive responses.

As a part of its commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, the The YouTube Nonprofit Program was developed. Through this program, nonprofits can broadcast on a special Nonprofit channel, which includes:

• Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
• Rotation of videos in the “Promoted Videos” areas throughout the site
• The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button

How to Upload Participatory Videos onto YouTube

Using YouTube requires a little bit of knowledge about the site itself and, to be really successful, some understanding of how to make a video for online distribution.

The YouTube Toolbox is a fantastic source of basic videomaking recommendations, including tips on the following:

• Optimizing for online distribution
• Planning for a shoot
• Recruiting talent
• Composing a video
• Simple effects
• Lighting for internet videos
• Digital audio
• Editing
• Music and soundtracks

Once you’ve finished editing your video, made sure it’s less than 10 minutes, smaller than 100MB, and in an acceptable format, you’re ready to upload it. Click “Upload Videos” in the upper-right-hand corner of any YouTube page.
Enter as much information about your video as possible, including Title, Description, Tags, and Category. The more information you include, the easier it is for users to find your video! Determine if you want your video set to Public or Private. Click the “Upload a Video” button. In the next window, click the “Browse” button to browse for the video file. Select the file you want to upload.
Click the “Upload Video” button. It can take from a couple minutes to an hour for your video to upload to YouTube. If you’re receiving an error with your Upload, you might want to make sure you’re attempting to upload a file that’s recognized by YouTube. YouTube accepts video files from most digital cameras and camcorders, and cell phones in the .AVI, .MOV, .WMV, and .MPG file formats.

Basic instructions and advanced tips on using YouTube can all be found at the site’s Help Center.

YouTube does not share profits with its content producers, as is becoming more popular with sites like Blip.tv.

Comparing YouTube to Other Video Sharing Sites

Check out Our Ratings and Comparisons of YouTube to other popular sites like Blip.tv, Veoh.com, and .Mac gallery sharing.

Check out other experts’ rating & comparison resources:

PC World, Top 10 Video Sharing Sites (Aug 2007)
DV Guru, 10 Video Sharing Sites Compared (April 2006)
Fabric of Folly Blog, 20 Video Sharing Sites Rated (Aug 2006)

• Video Volunteers in India recently collaborated with state sanitation workers to make a video exposing the unhealthy conditions in which they are forced to work;
• Sudden Flowers Productions is putting cameras in the hands of children living with HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia to explore and communicate their real experiences;
• Fly Up Media helped 5th graders from the Bronx to make a film about nutrition and sustainable farming;
• Barefoot Workshops recently launched Finding True North, a video program that works to give a voice to teens who have survived cancer, and let them communicate with kids who are presently dealing with cancer ; and,
• The VideoVoice Collective (our organization) recently finished a video on innovative approaches to encouraging healthy aging with the California Senior Leaders Program.

The list of public health-oriented participatory video projects and programs is expanding everyday. However, these projects are almost entirely uninformed by the research and experiences of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and vice versa, even though the two fields have a lot to learn from each other.

During the last ten years, and particularly since 2003, hundreds of scholarly articles and several books have been published on community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches in public health. Public health researchers and advocates have embraced the CBPR approach during a time in which growing concern for health disparities, the structural causes of disease, and social justice agendas have returned to the forefront of our field (M. Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003).

For those unfamiliar with the approach, CBPR is a systematic inquiry, with the participation of those affected by an issue for the purpose of education and action or effecting social change.(L. W. Green et al., 1995; L. W. Green, George, M.A., Daniel, M., Frankish, C.J. et al, 2003) The CBPR approach emphasizes community participation in all of the stages of research, including defining the research question, design, implementation, analysis, results reporting, and action on the results. Studies have found that, in partnership with communities, researchers can more effectively:

◊ Select relevant research questions (M. Minkler, Wallerstein, N., 2003);
◊ Enhance cultural sensitivity (Ammerman, Corbie-Smith, & St. George, 2003);
◊ Recruit and retain community members (Travers, 2004);
◊ Uncover lay knowledge critical to understanding health (Shah, 2004);
◊ Increase accuracy in interpretation of findings;
◊ Facilitate the dissemination and use of study findings; and,
◊ Increase the potential for turning research into action (Clements-Nolle, 2001).

In an adept summary of these successes, Corburn states, “When [CBPR] identifies hazards, highlights previously ignored questions, provides hard to gather data, involves difficult to reach populations, and expands the possibilities for intervention alternatives and success – science and democracy are improved.” (Corburn, 2005).

Although CBPR has been explored and developed with intensity during recent years, there remains a limited set of research methods available to practitioners of CBPR. A review of the literature reveals that the vast majority of CBPR projects utilize survey and text-based methods—methods that public health researchers (but rarely community members) have extensive training on and tend to be comfortable using. As an approach that values the inclusion of diverse ways of thinking, CBPR has a lot to gain from adopting methods beyond survey and text-based approaches. We must ask ourselves: does our limited set of tools result in limited community contribution to public health research and advocacy?

This dissertation project is motivated by the primary conclusions derived from the critical literature review included in the prospectus. As I conclude, there has been exponential growth in the use of a photographic CBPR methodology called photovoice during the last four years. This implies that there is an increasing interest among practitioners for a set of methodological tools that are unique to CBPR and yet expand our approach to include multiple medias.

Photovoice was originally developed and implemented by Caroline Wang, Mary Ann Burris, and colleagues in 1992 while working with rural village women in China’s Yunnan province (Lopez, Eng, Robinson, & Wang, 2005; C. C. Wang, Yi, Tao, & Carovano, 1998; Yi et al., 1995). Photovoice is described by Wang et al as “a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique” (C.C. Wang, Cash, & Powers, 2000). Founded on the principles of CBPR, photovoice is a collaborative approach to photography that involves community members in taking and discussing photographs as a means of catalyzing personal and community change (C. C. Wang et al., 1998). Photovoice is action-oriented and facilitates the use of photographs as “an advocacy tool to reach policy makers, health planners, community leaders, and other people who can be mobilized to make change” (C. C. Wang & Pies, 2004).

Since its introduction, photovoice methodology has been used with diverse populations around the world, such as high school students in Nigeria and black gays/lesbians in South Africa. It has been used to achieve participatory goals covering a wide range of issues, such as HIV/AIDS and breast cancer (Gavin, 2003; Graziano, 2003; Lopez et al., 2005; Short, 2006).

Photography has proved to be a powerful medium for engaging communities in CBPR– but it is not the only medium! More and more communities and activists around the world are using video to engage in community organizing, communication, and advocacy. However, video is yet to be adopted by public health practitioners of CBPR. The development of a new videovoice methodology is in concordance with the growing evidence, provided by photovoice, that multimedia tools offer unique opportunities for public health. In addition, the growing use, access, and simplicity of digital video production, results in new possibilities to explore more than pictures, adding moving pictures and dynamic sound to our CBPR toolbox.

Building on the work of photovoice practitioners, we can begin to explore a new approach to participatory video and to CBPR: videovoice. Videovoice can be defined as a health advocacy and research method through which people, who are usually the consumers of mainstream media or perhaps the subjects of media, get behind the video cameras to communicate their stories, knowledge, and visions. Videovoice will be a participatory media methodology and, so, projects will be undertaken by collaborative partnerships built of community members, academic researchers, and filmmakers. Forming a partnership among these disparate groups may be a community-building process that results in collective envisioning, filming, editing, and dissemination of films. Like photovoice, videovoice may facilitate:

(1) Research and documentation on a community’s strengths and challenges,
(2) Discussion of issues of importance in groups to promote critical consciousness and empowerment,
(3) Communication across communities (horizontal communication) and with policy- and decision-makers, institutional leaders, and program planners (vertical communication); and,
(4) Mobilization and action on social justice issues.

References

Ammerman, A., Corbie-Smith, G., & St. George, D. M. M. (2003). Research Expectations Among African American Church Leaders in the PRAISE! Project: A Randomized Trial Guided by Community-Based Participatory Research. American Journal of Public Health, 93(10), 1720-1727.
Barsam, R. (1988). The Vision of Robert Flaherty: The Artist As Myth and Filmmaker. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Clements-Nolle, K. D. (2001). HIV prevalence, risk behaviors, and attempted suicide in a hidden population: Results from the Transgender Community Health Project. Unpublished Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, California.
Flaherty, R. J. (1922). How I Filmed ‘Nanook of the North. World’s Work.
Gavin, M. (2003). Spread the word. British Journal of Photography, 150, 31-33.
Graziano, K. J. (2003). Through their own eyes: A photovoice and participatory analysis into the lives of black gay and lesbian South Africans. Unpublished Ed.D., University of San Francisco, California.
Green, L. W., George, M. A., Daniel, M., Frankish, C. J., Herbert, C. P., Bowie, W. R., et al. (1995). Study of participatory research in health promotion. Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada.
Green, L. W., George, M.A., Daniel, M., Frankish, C.J. et al. (2003). Guidelines for Participatory Reseach in Health Promotion. In M. Minkler, N. Wallerstein (Ed.), Community-Based Participatory Research for Health (pp. 419, Appendix C). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lopez, E., Eng, E., Robinson, N., & Wang, C. (2005). Photovoice as a Community-Based Participatory Research Method: A Case Study with African American Breast Cancer Survivors in Rural Eastern North Carolina. In B. A. Israel, E. Eng, A. Schultz & E. A. Parker (Eds.), Methods in community-based participatory research for health (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lunch, C. (2004). Participatory Video: Rural People Document their Knowledge and Innovations. Indigenous Knowledge Notes(71).
Lunch, C. (2006, March). Participatory Video as a Documentation Tool. Leisa Magazine, 22, 31-33.
Lunch, N., & Lunch, C. (2006). Insights Into Participatory Video: A Handbook for the Field (1st ed.). Oxford: Insight.
Minkler, M., & Wallerstein, N. (2003). Introduction to Community-Based Participatory Research. In M. Minkler & N. Wallerstein (Eds.), Community-Based Participatory Research for Health. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Minkler, M., Wallerstein, N. (2003). Community-Based Participatory Research for Health. San Franciso: Jossey-Bass.
Shah, R. (2004). A Retrospective Analysis of an HIV Prevention Program for Men in Gujarat, India. Unpublished paper, UC Berkeley, School of Public Health.
Short, R. V. (2006). New ways of preventing HIV infection: thinking simply, simply thinking. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 361(1469), 811-820.
Snowden, D. (1968). Eyes See; Ears Hear. Memorial University, Newfoundland.
Travers, R., Flicker, S. (2004). Ethical Issues in Community-Based Research. Paper presented at the Urban Health Community-Based Research Series Workshop, Wellesley.
Wang, C. C., Cash, J. L., & Powers, L. S. (2000). Who knows the streets as well as the homeless? Promoting personal and community action through photovoice. Health Promotion Practice, 1, 81-89.
Wang, C. C., & Pies, C. A. (2004). Family, maternal, and child health through photovoice. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 8(2), 95-102.
Wang, C. C., Yi, W. K., Tao, Z. W., & Carovano, K. (1998). Photovoice as a participatory health promotion strategy. Health Promotion International, 13(1), 75-86.
Yi, W. K., Li, V. C., Tao, Z. W., Lin, Y. K., Burris, M. A., Ming, W. Y., et al. (Eds.). (1995). Visual Voices: 100 Photographs of Village China by the Women of Yunnan Province.