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No / Memories on film is the outcome of an 18-month study funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s School for Social Care Research. Based on the principles of Participatory Video (Milne et al 2012), the study used digital storytelling and co-production techniques to create short films with 10 participants in a Leeds dementia care facility. Choice of images and narrative content were decided by the participants, who were aged between 76 and 99 years, and had lived in Leeds for most if not all of their lives. Almost all of them decided to tell the story of their own early life and its defining events, and the participants’ own voices, both speaking and singing, feature on the soundtrack to their films. We made extensive use of local history websites, and archives such as Leodis, when putting the films together. We were particularly keen to find out whether the creation of digital stories with this group of people – who can experience isolation and marginalisation – would help to increase their social participation. As a result we are now interested, not only in discussing the film-making process and the study outcomes, but also in identifying opportunities to have the completed films hosted by other websites and community groups. The summative focus groups for the study identified a number of potential uses for the films, including inter-generational work with schools, staff development initiatives, and raising public awareness.

This thesis is about the Reading and Writing for Filmmaking Afterschool program, an extracurricular focus group centered around engaging urban immigrant and minority working-class high school students in a discussion about high school dropout using participatory video as a methodological tool. The program was created under the assumption that, (1) within 'free spaces' students who are encouraged to express themselves and explore their social realities through innovative methods will reveal their understanding of high school dropout and the factors contributing to it, and (2) the way these students conceptualize and talk about high school dropout is significant to understanding this phenomenon. Through participatory video, observation, interviews, and storyboard narratives, I examine the discourse of minority and immigrant students as a means of understanding their cultural assumptions and observations of school dropout. As a result, this paper illuminates the issue of immigrant educational retention and attrition in an urban public school setting.

The Youth for EcoAction (YEA) Program is a project of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Winnipeg involving youth at risk in after-school programming. The program focuses on urban agriculture and gardening projects and was developed using the circle of courage model of youth empowerment. This research used participatory methods, including participatory video to analyze the program and its benefits. The YEA program creates positive change in the lives of participants and at a community-wide level. These benefits include skill building and job training, improved self esteem, nutrition and food security, increased environmental awareness and behaviour, and greater community strength. Youth serving agencies, community development organizations and government policy makers should look to the YEA program as a model for youth empowerment and community revitalization. This thesis also explores benefits of participatory research, specifically participatory video, and documents the personal learnings and journey of the author from researcher to practitioner.

The Youth for EcoAction (YEA) Program is a project of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Winnipeg involving youth at risk in after-school programming. The program focuses on urban agriculture and gardening projects and was developed using the circle of courage model of youth empowerment. This research used participatory methods, including participatory video to analyze the program and its benefits. The YEA program creates positive change in the lives of participants and at a community-wide level. These benefits include skill building and job training, improved self esteem, nutrition and food security, increased environmental awareness and behaviour, and greater community strength. Youth serving agencies, community development organizations and government policy makers should look to the YEA program as a model for youth empowerment and community revitalization. This thesis also explores benefits of participatory research, specifically participatory video, and documents the personal learnings and journey of the author from researcher to practitioner.

This study analyzes young women’s descriptions and conceptualizations of cyberviolence and cyberbullying, including how they both challenge and reify mainstream cyberbullying discourses. The central themes analyzed include the way(s) in which self-representation in social networking sites are constrained through the limited options young women describe as being available for self-expression in these spaces, how notions of publicity, privacy and context-specific communication in social networking sites factor in girls’ descriptions of platform architecture, and how platform architecture often amplifies cyberviolence. Finally, the study unpacks the reasons that young women offer to explain why adults are often so out of touch when it comes to understanding cyberbullying and its relationship to young people’s digital culture. This dissertation contributes to cyberviolence studies, feminist new media, and girls’ digital culture studies, and has relevance for critical feminist criminology, by centring the voices of young women in order to investigate cyberviolence through participatory video with a sizable number of young women. The findings are based on data collected through eight participatory video workshops, two co-produced short documentaries and six focus groups with one hundred and twelve (N=112) participants in total under the larger umbrella study “Cyber & Sexual Violence: Helping Communities Respond” (2013-2016). This project was a community partnership between the Atwater Library and Computer Centre in Montreal and the TAG Lab at Concordia University, and was funded by Status of Women Canada. I employ an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that puts feminist new media studies, feminist approaches to online misogyny and girls’ digital culture studies into conversation with the extant literature on cyberbullying and cyberviolence. This theoretical approach is used to examine how the social norms in the discourse communities of social networking sites that girls outline in their descriptions of cyberviolence are structured through age-old misogynistic myths and impossible contradictions around femininity. Employing a participatory arts-based feminist lens allowed me to invite participants to share their perspectives in an accessible and fun way while examining their work through qualitative thematic analysis. Among the many findings this research produced, three key themes extend as threads that run throughout the dissertation. First, my participants did not relate to the term ‘cyberbullying’ in the way that adults often use it. While researchers and policy-makers continue to debate how to define cyberviolence and cyberbullying, participant responses illustrated the need for more dialogue around the toxic social norms and assumptions that currently structure young people’s digital culture, mainstream cyberbullying debates and anti-cyberbullying programming. Secondly, young women’s focus on issues of publicity versus privacy, anonymity, and peer surveillance highlights both the nuances that girls’ voices contribute to ongoing cyberbullying debates and how social networking sites amplify age-old double standards facing women and girls in visual culture and the public sphere. Finally, the themes of empathy and education that emerged from participants’ suggestions for strategies with which to address cyberviolence underscore the systemic changes that will be necessary in tackling the continually evolving and widespread phenomenon of cyberviolence. Participants conceptualize cyberviolence and cyberbullying as existing along a continuum of daily interactions in social networking sites that include encountering everything from mean jokes to sexual violence.

In this examination of citizen surveillance, I engage with Foucaultian and Deleuzian conceptualizations of surveillance, power, resistance, control, and desire, to explore the motivation(s) of community members who film and disseminate footage of the police. Methodologically, I conducted semi-structured interviews with community stakeholders to study the latent thematic ideas embedded in their responses. These themes represent the underlying motivational factors a citizen surveiller may have when filming the police. In my analysis of these themes, I explore: citizen surveillers’ logic for resisting power; citizen surveillers’ understandings of power; and, citizen surveillers’ reported approaches to both passive and active forms of resistance. Subsequently, there appears to be an underlying desire for power and a resistance to power when filming the police. However, given the exploratory nature of this study, there is a need to continue investigating the theoretical and under substantiated claims about citizen surveillance and its association with race, gender and socio-economic status.

The Roma community has long been subjected to negative stereotypes and misrepresentations in the public sphere, leading to discrimination and prejudice. Roma youth in Glasgow, Scotland, supported by the Roma-led organisation Romano Lav, have taken an active role in challenging these negative portrayals through a participatory film project. One of the aims of this research is to explore how young Roma filmmakers are utilising cinematic storytelling to challenge harmful stereotyping of their community. The other one is to investigate the impact of participatory video projects on the film creators and their community. The study fits within the field of Communication for Development by addressing the transformative and empowering aspect of a film project. It aims to fill a gap in knowledge regarding self-representations of Roma and the role of participatory video in their community accounting for cultural specificity. It also adds an insight into the Romani youth’s attitudes and values, contributing this way to a broader knowledge of Scottish Roma while suggesting solutions for social change. By employing qualitative research methodologies, critical visual analysis and interviews, the study seeks to understand the experiences, perspectives, and motivations of the teenagers involved in the project. It is grounded in Paolo Freire’s theories linking participation and empowerment and Stuart Hall’s constructivist approach to representation. The analysis finds that the Roma youth use personal narratives, cultural traditions, and everyday experiences to construct new representations that challenge stereotypes. Moreover, it highlights the transformative impact of participatory video on the empowerment of the participants, its influence on strengthening communal identity and social bonds, and the film’s educational role in building a more equitable society. This study found that participatory video harnesses great potential for Roma self-representation and empowerment.

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