Voice, authenticity and ethical challenges: the participatory dissemination of youth-generated visual data over social media

Abstract

Using the theoretical frameworks of childhood studies and visual ethics, this article explores ethical ways of engaging children and young people in disseminating self-generated visual data (‘participatory dissemination’) over social media. The discussion draws on a research project carried out with a group of young people in an underserved community in South Africa. The project was an educational intervention that aimed to enable the participants to bring out their experiences with the HIV and AIDS pandemic in South Africa and to reflect on related issues through participatory video making. The methodological focus was on exploring visual ethics in the context of participatory dissemination. Despite a growing interest in social media, few studies have been conducted in relation to ethics in using social media as an outlet to disseminate visual data created by young people. This article contributes to addressing this knowledge gap. It is argued that (1) the process of remaking visual data can enhance the ethics of dissemination by offering young participants an opportunity to reflect on self-representation more carefully and (2) the verbal contextualisation of participant-generated visual data can contribute to a further clarification of young people’s ideas, thereby making dissemination more ethical. I am cautious, however, to overstate the significance of disseminating young people’s verbal and visual expressions without researchers’ discretion because such expressions may contribute to stigmatising the young people.

ORCID

Kyung-Hwa Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0078-7486

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyung-Hwa Yang

Kyung-Hwa Yang is a research associate at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa.