Takeda, Y. (2021). Towards “more participatory” participatory video: A thematic review of literature. Learning, Media and Technology.
This is a fruit of my original dissertation project (which was unfortunately vaulted for the future due to the global pandemic). In this paper, centering the idea of “participation” I review the literature of participatory video and examine how different forms of participation manifest in relation to the design of the project. I provide three broad categories of participatory video project in educational research: (1) participation-oriented approach, (2) story-oriented approach, and (3) expression-oriented approach. Here is the abstract of the paper: 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.’
