https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0478-5143
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ABSTRACT
Involving participants/intended audiences in discourse analysis may help to avoid overemphasising the structural effects of discourse and silencing participant voice. Yet, involving participants in complex analytic processes effectively can prove difficult. In this study, the authors undertook a Foucauldian discourse analysis of sexual consent material within eight (predominantly UK) wide-ranging, youth-focused campaigns to identify the discourses relevant to sexual consent and produce a collage for each discourse. Then, 43 young people from West Yorkshire, UK, helped to identify the underlying messages in the collages (i.e. the discourses), and consider who was constructed as powerful, and who benefited and ‘lost out’ from these messages. This paper explores the benefits and challenges of involving young people in a discourse analysis in this way, and concludes that, a ‘both/and’ approach should be employed to acknowledge both young people’s perspectives and the academic researcher’s desire to retain a critical stance toward problematic discourses.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the young people who took part in the research, as well as the organisations and gatekeepers who agreed for the research to take place. The project was funded by a doctoral studentship from Leeds Beckett University (Leeds School of Social Sciences).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Saskia Jones
Dr Saskia Jones is a Lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University.
Kate Milnes
Dr Kate Milne is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University.
Rhys Turner-Moore
Dr Rhys Turner-Moore is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University.