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We’ve Raised Their Voice. Is Anyone Listening? Participatory Video Practitioners and Valued Citizen Voice in International Development Contexts

Tamara Plush

Doctoral Thesis University of Queensland (2016), xviii, 259 pp.

"This thesis offers a study on the nuanced understandings of and the interplay between participatory video (PV), citizen voice and international development. The study investigates contemporary PV practitioners’ conceptualisations of the phenomenon of using PV to raise citizen voice in internation ... al development contexts. The study participants were 25 global PV practitioners who had experience on more than 650 PV projects. Of those projects, approximately 250 specifically aimed to raise the voice of excluded groups in international development contexts. Through investigating the PV practitioners’ perceptions of the phenomenon, the study identified three distinct epistemologies relevant to PV practice and raising citizen voice. The study called these the amplified, engaged and equitable voice pathways. Making the three categories explicit is of critical value to the PV field. They provide a language and theoretical grounding for why certain PV approaches may be more effective than others for social and/or political change. Of the three pathways, the research ultimately deemed equitable voice as the most viable for citizen voice to be both authentically representative and respectively valued in decision-making spaces. Accordingly, the study drew from scholarship and the characteristics within the equitable voice pathway to develop a conceptual framework for raising valued citizen voice with PV. The framework offers five key principles; named as personal recognition, collective representation, social and political recognition, responsive listening and empathic relationships. While having a framework is valuable for PV practice, the study also recognised that a conceptual framework in itself is often insufficient. Its viability requires an enabling environment for meaningful application. Thus, the research also identified six institutional views of PV practice in international development contexts with potential to diminish voice. It named them as the output-focused, voice opportunity, apolitical, agenda-led, harmless and uncomplicated views. These were views the PV practitioners in the study described as constraining their ideals in practice. The views ranged from institutions prioritising PV film outputs over political dialogue to institutions setting agendas with potential to suppress authentic citizen voice. The study interrogated the identified institutional views to discover their differing possibilities for legitimising or limiting citizen voice. The thesis concludes by encouraging three areas of consideration for participatory video to enhance citizen voice in democratic decision-making processes. First, it proposes deliberate attention on strengthening voice representation and voice receptivity in PV activities to reduce social and political inequity. Second, it promotes recognition of how political and institutional environments influence PV’s ability to raise citizen voice sufficiently. Third, it suggests greater reflection on how PV practitioners’ conceptualisations of voice affect citizen voice outcomes; and how practitioners might use their own agency to ensure meaningful change. Such forethought and action expands possibilities for PV practice to support citizen voice in being heard, valued and influential." (Abstract) more

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Interrogating Practitioner Tensions for Raising Citizen Voice with Participatory Video in International Development

Tamara Plush

Nordicom Review, volume 36, issue Special Issue (2015), pp. 57-70

"Within international development, strengthening the voice of citizens living in poverty is recognised as vital to reducing inequity. In support of such endeavors, participatory video (PV) is an increasingly utilised communicative method that can stimulate community engagement and amplify the voice ... more

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Participatory Video and Citizen Voice – We’ve Raised Their Voices: Is Anyone Listening?

Tamara Plush

Glocal Times, issue 22-23 (2015), 16 pp.

"Sheathed in the glamour of filmmaking and technical innovation, participatory video (PV) is often evangelised as a communication for development methodology that intrinsically fosters transformative social and political change. Such celebratory notions, however, can obscure the complexity facing pa ... more

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Using Visual Storytelling for Women's Empowerment

Tamara Plush

Media Development, volume 60, issue 3 (2013), pp. 25-29

"Communicators who work with photography and video in the development context know the power visuals can have in bearing witness to the reality people living in poverty face. When contextualized, visuals can transcend distance and create a global dialog around topics in need of deeper understanding ... more

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Voices of Ethnic Minority Children: Participatory Video on Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change in Vietnam

Tamara Plush, Nguyen Trong Ninh

Plan International (2010), 10 pp.

"This booklet documents the participatory video methodology as an affordable and easy-to-use video tool enabling community members to record their experience and strengthen their own knowledge on disaster risks and climate change, as well as to increase their capacity to act on that knowledge and se ... more