A media campaign for ourselves: building organizational media capacity through participatory action research

Abstract

This research examines the use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods in conducting a media messaging campaign designed to increase the visibility of queer people of color in a local community. Rather than focusing on the impact of viewing the campaign on the local community, this project assesses the way that participating in creating a campaign can positively impact a grassroots social justice organization. Here we see that the process of creating and managing an image campaign can serve as an opportunity for education and capacity-building for organizations that is distinct from the impact of the media campaign on its target audience. This includes achievements such as expanding the capacity of the organization to engage in strategic media work now and in the future, developing the ability for members of the organization to clearly articulate the goals of the media campaign and engage in productive conversations about the campaign within the community, and strengthening community buy-in for the campaign and its message. Together, this project demonstrates a new way of linking PAR to a media messaging campaign, and articulates some of the potential gains in building media capacity for grassroots community organizations.

Keywords:

• Participatory action research
• media campaign
• LGBT studies
• race/ethnicity
• visibility

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my partners at Freedom Inc. for their collaboration on this project – M. Adams, Kabzuag Vaj, Zon Moua, True Yee Thao and many youth participants without whom this project could not be possible. Thanks also to Max Rameau for his design work. All images reproduced with permission from Freedom Inc.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This research was partially supported through funding from the Hamel Family Fund and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School Fall Competition.

Notes on contributor

Dr Lori Kido Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also an affiliate of the Asian American Studies Program and the Gender and Women's Studies Department. She is the author of Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship (Forthcoming, NYU Press) and the co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Asian American Media (Forthcoming, Routledge with Vincent Pham).

ORCID

Lori Kido Lopez http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6805-8864

Notes

1 PAR practitioners do not necessarily equally include all participants in every aspect of the research process; sometimes it makes more sense or is more efficacious to divide up the labor between different stakeholders. It is the research philosophy that is important, as well as agreement from all involved parties.