Ethical dilemmas in representation: engaging participative youth

Abstract

This paper reflects upon the ways that multi-modal data and student productions enhance and challenge our methodologies and ethical commitments in our collaborative critical ethnographic research in youth media. We review recent research and theory related to multi-modal representations and we critically explore how our data are produced, including how claims are represented and substantiated in the findings. We consider, through specific examples, how youth media provides insights into the meaning-making and identity work of minority youth, while presenting new representational demands for traditional scholarly publication. In closing, we discuss perceived tensions in the representation and disembodiment of voice, confidentiality of youth participants and issues of empowerment evidenced in the communication of multi-modal research findings.

Keywords:

• multi-modal representations
• collaborative critical ethnography
• youth media

Acknowledgements

Part of this research was made possible with grants from the University of Northern Colorado. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and feedback and to Dr Barbara Dennis, guest editor of this special issue, whose support and encouragement have been outstanding. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the staff and in particular the young people in the youth media programmes with whom we work and whose voices, we hope, are being heard.

Notes

1. Youth media engages young people in the production of video, film, television, radio, music, web, art and print in the analysis and production of media products. Youth media organisations ‘provide the technology and training necessary for inner city youth to create quality media that represents their experiences, stimulates meaningful dialogue, and promotes social change … [P]articipants become life long learners who gain workforce skills to help shape a successful future for themselves and their communities’ (http://www.consciousyouthmediacrew.org/, accessed January 18, 2010.).

2. See www.PhotoVoice.org for a history and background, as well as examples of work.

3. There is also a small yet growing tendency to produce hybrid texts: still images are used in the print-based version and hotlinks to audio–video files available online (see White 2009, for an excellent illustration).

4. Although Valenzuela and Foley (2005) do not explicitly propose the term collaborative critical ethnography, they do discuss extensively the politics of collaboration as a key issue to critical ethnography in general.

5. For an example of independent student work submitted as a PSA competition, see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6191eQMbw10.

6. Given the collaborative nature of our work many projects are student selected and they also participate in focus group and debriefing sessions where they provide feedback and direction for future projects and research ideas.

7. In one early survey, all students reported that they preferred to be behind the camera as opposed to on camera.