Note: This page is a chapter in Caricia’s dissertation prospectus. It will be growing and changing until her deadline, January 31. Your comments are very valuable at this formative point in the development of participatory media and public health theory. Please post your feedback on my working draft.

Caricia Catalani, MPH
Updated: November 3, 2007

Videovoice is an approach to participatory video that is rooted in the practices and conceptual frameworks of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and participatory media. As the graphic below depicts, these approaches to research and media have a number of common influences, such as critical theory, and disparate influences, such as new media theorists and the intellectual contributions of Paulo Freire.

Conceptual Roots of Community-Based Participatory Research

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach to research that has been increasingly recognized and adopted by public health practitioners during the last ten years. Although it not necessarily a theory, CBPR has strong theoretical roots that inform its practice. As a form of community-based and participatory research, videovoice is the intellectual progeny of CBPR and, therefore, heavily informed by its the theoretical framing, cause-and-effect assumptions, and aspired impacts of videovoice.

In an analysis of the conceptual roots of CBPR, Wallerstein and Dunn distinguish between a Northern tradition, rooted in Kurt Lewin’s action research, and a Southern tradition, rooted in Freirian empowerment education for critical consciousness (Wallerstein & Dunn, 2003). Lewin developed Action Research in opposition to the positivist research paradigm, which legitimizes researcher interpretation and creation of knowledge. This scientific paradigm has long argued that researchers, as methodologically trained and objective observers are most capable of collecting, analyzing, and communicating truth. Lewin proposed an approach to research that involved a cycle of planning, action, and investigating the results of action (Lewin, 1997). According to Wallerstein, the Northern school of CBPR is conceptually derived from Talcott Parsons and his predecessors, “who view social progress as rational decision making based on applying ever-increasing scientific knowledge to world problems.” (Wallerstein, pp 29)

Although the Northern tradition has strong roots in CBPR, videovoice is more strongly aligned with the Southern tradition. The Southern tradition of CBPR has significant conceptual roots in critical theory and the work of Paulo Freire.

Critical theory, originally referred to as the Frankfurt School, was initially developed in Germany during the late 1930s to early 1950s (Ingram & Simon-Ingram, 1992). Max Horkheimer, the first critical theorist, describes it as a radical and emancipatory form of Marxist theory that critiques the model of science put forward by logical positivism (Horkheimer, 1937). During its initial development, critical theory became a complex social criticism that combined Marx’s ideas about class conflict and domination, Freud’s ideas about the development of personality, and the utopian style of philosophy concerned with freedom, justice, and happiness (Ingram & Simon-Ingram, 1992). Critical theory was born during a unique time in European history, characterized by authoritarianism and anti-Semitism, the growth of the labor movement, and the opposing expansion of Soviet Communism and Western Capitalism.

Critical theorist, rooted in Marxist social theory, expanded on the more traditional Marxist concern with inequitable distribution of the resources for industrial production. They argued that in addition to industrial production, elite’s control over the production of culture and knowledge is also a central feature of hegemony over the masses (Ingram & Simon-Ingram, 1992). Both classic and modern critical theorists write extensively about the subtle process of social domination through ideology, the production of knowledge, and the hegemonic powers of mass media communication. According to critical theory and in agreement with Foucault, knowledge is socially and historically constructed (Foucault, 1980; Habermas, 1987; Ingram & Simon-Ingram, 1992). The production of knowledge is mediated through the perspectives of the elite class.

To emancipate society from the control of the elite and to produce knowledge that empowers the public, critical theorist Jurgen Habermas argued we must aspire to build a more ideal democratic public sphere (Habermas, 1989b). Habermas’ concept of the democratic public sphere is central to the development of participatory research and participatory media and so, in turn, to videovoice. The public sphere, according to Habermas, is the systems and organizations that mediate between private interests of everyday life and the public concerns of social life (Habermas, 1989a). Within an ideally democratic public sphere people freely assemble to rationally discuss, debate, and find consensus on public issues. Although this concept is controversial, countless numbers of papers have been written on processes/organizations that either enhance or reduce the public sphere according to their adherence to the following characteristics defined by Habermas: participation is open to all, all participants are considered equal, and issues of public concern can be raised for rational debate (Habermas, 1997).

Taking these theoretical concepts one step further, radical pedagogist Paulo Freire examined the process through which any person could engage in the kind of powerful and deliberative democracy to which Habermas refers. Freire worked with illiterate and non-formally educated people in rural Brazil. He wrote his most influential works, including “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Education for Critical Consciousness,” during the early 1970s. At the time, authoritarian regimes controlled much of Latin America and Freire was forced to leave Brazil for his writing on critical consciousness, emancipation, and social justice.

Freire demonstrated that critical dialogue with others could result in the ability to “perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in the process of transformation.”(Freire, 1970) In effect, Freire proved that the poor and the uneducated could form their own powerful public sphere. The concept of critical consciousness, or conscientização in his native Portuguese, is central to this demonstration and highly influential in the CBPR approach. Conscientização is the process of “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” (Freire, 1970)(pp35). Through this process, oppressed men and women come to identify and question the power structures (political, economic, historic, and social) that enable and/or disable communities. Freire’s technique for critical group dialogue and conscientização involves an iterative cycle of reflection and action, or praxis. To motivate praxis, Freire often used visual images and artifacts (Freire, 1973) to motivate discussion and provoke action.

Participatory Media

The conceptual roots of participatory media lie in the traditions of critical theory and the recently developed new media theory. Critical theorists Adorno, Habermas, and Marcuse are known for their philosophical contributions to mass media theory. Writing during the eve of Europe’s totalitarian era, Adorno theorized that under the control of dominant classes, mass media serves as a mechanism of social control (Adorno, 1954). Television, he argued, automatizes individual behavior, manipulates individual’s use of language, and weakens the forces of individual resistance by subversively altering our expectations of reality.

Habermas, taking Adorno’s critique a step further, contended that media and technology will never be a force toward the development of a democratic public sphere (Habermas, 1971, 1989a, 1998). According to Habermas’ analysis, the media destroys the public sphere by replacing rational deliberation with the manufactured and manipulative opinions of media experts (Habermas, 1989a). As such, the media shapes, constructs, and limits public discourse to those themes validated by media corporations. Thus, it transforms rational democratic participants into citizen-consumers, who ingest and passively absorb entertainment and information. Even in the era of Internet-based media, Habermas holds to his former analysis that all mass media leads society away from the ideals of a participatory democracy (Habermas, 1998). This assertion by Habermas has been the subject of intense debate by media theorists.

Herbert Marcuse, a critical theorist and contemporary of Habermas’, agreed with his colleagues’ theories on the power of mass media. However, Marcuse theorized that media and technology could be emancipated and used as a powerful tool to oppose totalitarian forces (Ingram & Simon-Ingram, 1992). He argued:

“The more technological rationality, freed from its exploitative features, determines social production, the more will it become dependent on political direction – on the collective effort to attain a pacified existence, with the goals which the free individuals may set for themselves.” (pp 109)

With this statement and his theoretical work on technology as a means for equality, Marcuse led the conceptual development of new media theory.

New media theorists include hundreds of public intellectuals that are building the conceptual framework with which to describe, analyze, and predict the social ramifications of new technologies in mass media. The burgeoning of new media theory is in step with the advent of technological tools and systems that alter the production, distribution, and consumption of media. Of these technologies, none has changed media more than the Internet. With the birth of the Internet and into the 1990s, new media theorists have developed a set of conceptual frameworks that explore the social meaning of the change from traditional mass media to more participatory forms of media. These theorists agree overwhelmingly that the era of participatory media, introduced by the popularization of the Internet, alters the structure of social networks and of the media so fundamentally that Habermas’ dismissal of the media as a positive force for democracy can no longer be applied universally to all forms of media (Benkler, 2006; Best & Kellner, 2001; Castells, 2004b, 2007; Castells & Cardoso, 2006; Castells & Catterall, 2001; Jenkins, 2006a, 2006b; Jenkins, Thorburn, & Seawell, 2003; Kellner, 2006; Rheingold, 1985, 2002).

Given the radical changes in media production, distribution, and consumption that have occurred during the last ten years, authors are all writing and theorizing about very contemporary phenomenon. Douglas Kellner, the Philosophy of Education Chair of the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, most directly confronts Habermas’ assumptions that media cannot be an emancipatory force (Durham & Kellner, 2006; Kellner, 1984, 1995, 2003, 2005, 2006; Marcuse & Kellner, 1998; Ryan & Kellner, 1988). Kellner’s basic contention is that:

“…the media, state, and business are the major institutional forces of contemporary capitalist societies, that the media “mediate” between state, economy, and social life, and that the mainstream broadcasting media have not been promoting democracy or serving the public interest and thus are forfeiting their crucial structural importance in constructing a democratic society.” (Kellner, 2006)

According to Kellner, globalization and new technologies require further development of the concept of a public sphere today. Kellner’s new global public sphere includes participatory modes of media and communication that facilitate and enhance debate, discussion, and information distribution. The implications of this new theoretical construction of the public sphere are that a democratic politics “will teach individuals how to use the new technologies, to articulate their own experiences and interests, and to promote democratic debate and diversity, allowing a full range of voices and ideas…” (Kellner, 2006) And, therefore, according to Kellner’s theories, democratization of the media is not only possible, it is essential. The process of media democratization will take place through mass education and media literacy (Kellner, 1998, 2004).

Manuel Castells, Chair of Communication and Technology at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, has written over twenty books on technology, society, and the Internet. In many of them, he contributes to the overwhelming consensus among new media authors that power in society is achieved through networks and the fundamental structure of networks are changing and democratizing. He argues:

“But power does not reside in institutions, not even the state or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society. Or, rather, in what I propose to call the ‘switchers’; that is, the mechanisms connecting or disconnecting networks on the basis of certain programs or strategies. For instance, in the connection between the media and the political system.” Pg 224 (Castells, 2004a)

Of course, Castells does not assume that the growth and globalization of a networked society will necessarily introduce more equity. However, the conceptual understanding that networks are the underlying structure of our lives must inspire practices to counter these structures with alternative networks, “networks that disrupt certain connections and establish new ones, such as disconnecting political institutions from the business-dominated media and re-anchoring them in civil society through horizontal communications networks.” (pg 224)

Yochai Benkler, a professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and the author of the already well revered book “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,” argues that networks… Benkler examines the ways in which new information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may potentially have transformative consequences for economy and society (Benkler, 2006). Commons-based peer production… Networked information economy to describe 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). (Benkler, 1996)
Henry Jenkins… (Jenkins, 2006a, 2006b; Jenkins et al., 2003; McPherson, Shattuc, & Jenkins, 2002; Thorburn, Jenkins, & Seawell, 2003)

Participatory media advocates argue that new forms of grassroots, community, and citizen media build new networked possibilities for enhancing our democratic public sphere. Conceptual work on this front has included participatory media techniques like blogging (Jenkins, 2006b), social networking (Rheingold, 2002), community radio and access television (Jankowski & Prehn, 2002), the creation of participatory media collectives like IndyMedia (Jong, Shaw, & Stammers, 2005), and participatory video (White, 2003) (?)

References

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