Toward ‘more participatory' participatory video: A thematic review of literature

ABSTRACT

Dramatically increased accessibility to recording technologies and participatory nature of today’s information environment certainly have emancipatory potentials. Perhaps, we live in an era that Dziga Vertov once dreamed of: mass authorship of filmmaking reveals the injustice and inequality of the world. However, in reality, we are witnessing political turmoil characterized by partisan division and a surge of populism. Against such a backdrop, we need to rethink the ways to unleash the critical potential of participatory media and reenvision how it can facilitate people’s civic engagements for social transformation. By positing that very act of defining participation as a political struggle, this paper thematically reviews literature and examine how diverse forms of participation manifests through different designs of participatory video projects. Along the journey, I interrogate the premises of participatory video, explore the diversity of the approach, and identify the challenges and dilemmas for making participatory video ‘more participatory.’

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory video
• participatory action research
• participatory culture
• power
• authorship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Dr Ryuko Kubota, Dr Kedrick James, and Dr André Elias Mazawi for their valuable feedback on the earlier drafts of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuya Takeda

Yuya Takeda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Taking an existentialist orientation, he studies conspiracy theories and explores how critical media literacy education can address the roles of desire in the reading and writing of the world. He is also an experimental street photographer.