Qualitative lecture 7- Photovoice

Question 1

What is the Photovoice method?

Answer 1

• It is a participatory action research method that uses photographs and audio or written captions as a way of collecting narratives of lived experiences.
• It is a process through which members produce stories of change about their own communities
• Stories are based on photographs and accompanied by captions or narratives.

Question 2

What type of knowledge production and research practices does Photovoice call for?

Answer 2

• Photovoice calls for knowledge production and research practices that have an explicit agenda for social change.
• These challenge the idea of research as “neutral and value free”
• Photovoice calls for transformative practices in research.

Question 3

How is Photovoice a powerful tool and process for a social justice framework?

Answer 3

• Photovoice disrupts epistemological violence against people and places studied.
• Photovoice focuses on change and empowering the communities studied.
• Photovoice mediates between knowledge projects and lived experiences. (it presents questions around what knowledge is, who holds and can create knowledge/who are the “experts” of particular realities)
• Photovoice engages people to take part in the changes they want to see take place in their environments.
• Photovoice questions power and disrupts power relations. E.g. power relations between researchers and communities, or between communities and stakeholders, or within communities.

Question 4

What key conceptual tools guide PAR projects such as photovoice?

Answer 4

1. Participation
2. Empowerment
3. Critical Consciousness
4. Social Capital.

Question 5

What does participation mean in terms of PAR and photovoice?

Answer 5

• Participation is a political process that challenges the oppressive structures and lived experiences of disenfranchised groups.
• Power relationships mediate people’s ability to participate in society and decisions that impact their lives.
• PAR seeks to disrupt these power process by promoting participation and control by individuals over their own lives.
• Participation as the power to represent oneself and gain recognition and access to resources needed for change.
• The identification of issues that need to change- this is a collective process.

Question 6

What does participation allow for?

Answer 6

• People’s daily lives to be discussed
• Solutions to be debated
• Action to be taken towards particular goals.

Question 7

What three mechanisms enable participation?

Answer 7

1. Empowerment: both and individual psychological state and social process by which individual communities are inspired to act towards social justice, are engaged in activities that promote their well-being, and feel confident and in control of their lives.
2. Critical consciousness: A process of action and reflection to understand how individuals are shaped by the social context in which they live and how this context impacts their daily realities
3. Social capital: this refers to levels of trust and reciprocity in the community and common norms and beliefs, and exists through interpersonal relationships (networks)

Question 8

What is the procedure for photovoice?

Answer 8

• Researcher and participants come together to discuss their lives to explore factors that limit participation in social life (e.g. unemployment)
• Researcher facilitates the process in consultation with participants
• Consultatio results in a chosen theme as the focus of the project
• Participants are given cameras and trained in basic photography
• Participants go out and take photographs.
• Photographs and captions are showcased in an exhibition (participants make decisions about the exhibition including where, what, who. The exhibition raises awareness and sensitizes the public to the issues raised.)

Question 9

What are some examples of photovoice studies?

Answer 9

• Experiences of black students at UCT
• Young black women representing their identities
• Black women in street-based sex work
• Learners’ representations of their community.

Question 10

What do we know about representation and affect?

Answer 10

• Politics of representation and affect are a fundamental concern in disrupting power relations.
• Visual aspect of photovoice as a powerful way of enabling participants to represent their own lives. E.g. to change existing essentializing and pathologizing narratives; portrayals of black children as hungry and dirty; challenges the deficit models of representations.
• The affective aspect is important in that photographs convey experiences that cannot be told through words
• There exists a tension between reproducing pathologized representations and resisting and disrupting them

Question 11

How is photovoice data analysed?

Answer 11

• Analysing photovoice data can take many forms. E.g. thematic or content analysis. E.g. discourse or narrative analysis.
• Approach to analysis is informed by the data collected and the kinds of questions the study seeks to address.

Question 12

What are some ethical concerns relevant to photovoice studies?

Answer 12

1. Consent- taking photographs of other people may incur risk (seek verbal/written consent) and also think about minors and the issue of assent.
2. Safety: Researchers and participants discuss ways of minimizing risks to safety. (E.g. physical and emotional safety. E.g. safety of researchers and participants and those photographed).
3. Power and representation: Discussions on the politics of representation (e.g. photographing children and vulnerable persons- rather exclude or anonymize) (e.g. self-portraits and deliberate visibility)