PhD Thesis – BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media Education

ABSTRACT

BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media
by Shawn Naphtali Sobers

Research Question
“According to facilitators, participators and trainees of community media educational activity, what are the prime motivations of involvement, and what impacts and areas of sustainability result from the sector’s instances of pedagogy?”

Thesis Summary
The author of this thesis is active as a practitioner working within the area of community media education activity: the focus area of this research.  This research links practice to theory to address the central research question.  It employs methodologies informed by post-colonial theories including auto-ethnography and critical pedagogy to discuss the research findings in context of wider literature drawn from the disciplines of community media, community arts, media education, educational psychology, informal education, anthropology and cultural studies.

Community Media activities operate in a fragmented landscape of practice, making the notions of impact and sustainability problematic issues to negotiate, and presents difficulties with identifying related evidence.  This research presents extensive qualitative ethnographic investigation into the impacts and sustainability in the lives of facilitators, participants and trainees who have been involved in such projects for a minimum of four years.  This research evidences the prime motivations of why these stakeholders got involved with the projects from the very beginning, and maps these findings against the impacts and cultural sustainability as articulated, gaining an insight into both the pedagogic journey of the individuals, and the pedagogic qualities of the media projects.

This study employs a methodology that favours the stakeholders to speak for themselves, presenting individuals articulating what the impacts were on their own lives directly, thus matching the methodology of the study with the principles of the community media sector itself: to enable individuals to represent themselves.  At specific instances throughout this thesis the author will be referred to in the first person, due to the adopted additional methodology of autoethnography, which links analytical interpretation with personal exploration. 

Download pdf of full thesis – click here.

I passed my viva and got my PhD! ;-)

In celebration, here is a ‘Dance your PhD’ video for your delight!  (see explanation of dance below the video).

One day you may well see me dancing stakeholder’s motivations, impacts and cultural sustainability of their involvement in community media education activity.  (of course danced in an ethnographic way!)

Until then, enjoy Kat Potter and friends…..

The dance follows the N2O cycle and demonstrates the fractionation of isotopes which will leave a signature in the tropospheric measurements. All three dancers are N2O molecules, starting on the ground in the soil which is the main source of N2O. N2O is emitted from the soil lightest isotope to heaviest, and the dancers “move on up” in this order. In the troposphere N2O acts as a greenhouse gas through the absorption of radiation in 3 vibrational modes. With one hand as a nitrogen atom, torso as central nitrogen, and the other hand as an oxygen atom, the dancers exhibit the three specific movements of N2O’s vibrational modes. Stepping onto the chairs represents the progression of N2O into the stratosphere, which is its only significant loss process. In the stratosphere the N2O is subject to intense UV radiation from the sun. This high energy is shown in the dancers’ high energy, more spastic dancing. The radiation leads to the photolysis (destruction) of N2O, and the lightest isotopes (and smallest dancer) are preferentially destroyed, thus jumping from the chair.

Kat Potter, MIT, PhD candidate
Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science
Supporting dancers: Elke Hodson, Matt Rigby (Post docs, Dept. of EAPS, MIT)
PhD thesis title: Tropospheric N2O isotopic composition: Instrumentation development and preliminary data for the constraint of the N2O global budget and stratospheric influence

Community Media as ‘Third Cinema’

I haven’t written here much lately as I had to put all my writing energy into finishing writing my PhD, which is now done, (the viva in May, wish me luck!!!).  There are a few places I want to take my research further in the future, one of which is to develop the discourse of positioning the films made in community media educational projects as a form of ‘Third Cinema’, the independent political film tradition  1. 

Mike Wayne describes Third Cinema as “a body of theory and filmmaking practice committed to social and cultural emancipation.  This body of filmmaking is small, indeed tiny in terms of world cinema output.  Yet Third Cinema films are amongst the most exciting and challenging films ever made….It challenges both the way cinema is conventionally made (for example, it has pioneered collective and democratic production methods) and the way it is consumed.” (Wayne, 2001)

I’m sure this description will resonate with those of you who facilitate the making of films with young people and adults in participatory contexts.

I’m interested in how community media is active in the sense that, rather than only documenting and reflecting on a social situation or problem, it also seeks solutions.  Solutions are often sought through either;

1) the promotion of debate when the work is screened (in schools, community centres, on community radio, etc);

2) through the use of allegory in the actual narrative;  

3) by using the work in training situations for community workers, counsellors, teachers, police, etc, to affect change in decision makers’ attitudes towards a situation.  Community media work is often used in mediation sessions with disputing members of a community as a tool for conflict resolution.

A ‘debate active’ community media ties in with my realisation that community media educational activities are primarily a form of action research (though often without the actual research!) rather than ethnographic in intention.  At the start of my PhD I was thinking that community media is very ethnographic as the films and radio programmes shine a light on their communities, engaging in oral history, unearthing hidden stories, etc, and therefore do anthropology in their own back yards.  I now realise however that these activities are more in the vein of action research, in that they work according to a method to affect change.  They instil a pride in their communities and cultural identities, promoting hidden stories to show the communities have ‘value’, ‘depth’, and a seriousness that can inspire younger generations to take pride in their surroundings, and the people who live there, or to raise awareness and educate about a certain social issue or problem.   

The use of the term ‘action research’ is of course problematic as community media facilitators on the whole do not conduct long term research studies about what they do and the effect it might have.  (That is essentially what my PhD was.)  I guess what I am suggesting by using the term, is that community media education is ‘lived’ action research, rather than academic.  The impacts of how participants have used the projects to progress themselves are evident in life, though often not analysed.  This is where Dr Alexandra Juhasz’s positioning of the term ‘Media Praxis’ becomes useful.  It is ‘Media as Action’, not solely ‘Media as Observation’.  Hence the difference between ‘Research as Action’ (action research), and ‘Research as Observation’ (ethnography).

Thus for participatory producers to consciously make a film, radio programme (etc), knowing they want the work to have an active impact on the audiences regarding their sense of self-worth as a community, and also on the behaviour of audience as individuals, is a politicised act.  This politicised community media practice and community media process sees the work residing in the realm of the larger film tradition of ‘Third Cinema’.  This again demonstrates how community media practice embodies a deep sense of history and theory that is ‘lived’, experienced and worked through, rather than consciously drawn upon and overtly realised.  The realisation of its context in history can only strengthen the work and confidence of community media facilitators.  It has long been realised in academia that community media is politicised and operates as an element of the Habermas’ notion of the Public Sphere, (Howley 2005, and Lewis 2006).  I would now like to take those ideas into the discourse of Third Cinema and methodologies such as ‘lived’ action research.

Soon on this blog I will create some ‘screening rooms’ where community media productions can be discussed in context of ideas such as Third Cinema, the Public Sphere and other notions that I feel are useful to actual community media practice (praxis).  I hope you join me.  Pass the popcorn!

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Footnote

1 – First Cinema are “dominant, mainstream” movies, and Second Cinema are ”art[house], authorial” independent films.  (Wayne, 2001, page 2)

 

References

Howley, K (2005), Community Media: People, Places and Communication Technologies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pages 19-20

Lewis, P. (2006). Community Media: Giving “a voice to the Voiceless”, in P. Lewis and S. Jones (Eds.) (2006). From the Margins to the Cutting Edge: Community Media and Empowerment. IAMCR, Hampton Press, USA. Pages 32-33

 Wayne, M. (2001) Political Film: The dialectics of Third Cinema, Pluto Press, London, page 5

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Channels of activity and emphasis of thought in Community Media (a methodology of mapping)

Since 2004, whenever I have given a paper at a conference about community media I have shown a table on powerpoint, (see the first table below).  I would go on to explain how this table informed my definition of the sector – which is according to the main areas of emphasis of activity by practitioners.

 My description and definition of community media states that the channels of activity are according to the main motivation of the action, ranging from;

-  the community stations that have no overt political agenda;
- the media activists using technology as a tool for political and social campaigns;
- media education with a media industry agenda;
- and educational projects that use technology as a tool to aid transferable skills. 

This isn’t to say that there isn’t cross-over between these channels, as there definitely is and the lines are blurry.  But I feel this framework does capture the main strands of motivation in community media practice, which are then delivered in an infinite amount of variations.

(I’ve written a chapter about this in a book called ‘Understanding Community Media’ edited by Kevin Howley, to be published in November this year by Sage.)

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What I have now come to realise is that this framework is not only the means for me to define and understand what happens in community media practice, it is also the hypothesis by which to map the thought processes in community media theory and participation. 

For example, for my literature review chapter I wrote up the history of the idea of Media Literacy, and I found that the different opinions on what the concept was by scholars fit into the same framework according to the main areas of emphasis (see table below). 

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I have also written up the history of community media according to what has been  mentioned in community media & arts texts, starting at the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in pre-history (Caton-Rosser, 2006: 14) through to the UK government setting up Creative Partnerships in 2001 (Harding, 2005: 14), which in some cases has tried to be to UK schools and freelance artists/media facilitators what Roosevelt’s New Deal was in 1930s USA.  (This history also contains moments such as Thomas Paine’s pamphleteering, the world’s first community radio station, the MacBride Report, the founding of Deep Dish TV, the Rodney King incident, and the use of video by the Zapatista movement and the Chiapas Video Project in Mexico, amongst many, many, many other references!)

I’m now in the middle of mapping this history according this framework, and already it seems to be making sense! 

My next task after this is to analyse and interpret the piles of text data I have got from the interviews I conducted with participants of community media projects, many of which are longitudinal studies spanning 13 years worth of reflection by participants, looking at the impact on their lives, (some were 14 years old when they first regularly attended media workshops and are now 27!).  As well as other types of analysis and interpretation, I will also map the motivations of the individuals involved according to this framework.

Obviously these thoughts are still a work in progress.  I will be writing about this more over the summer and hope to get some journal papers published about this alongside my thesis at the end of the year.  (I especially want to get my history of community media chapter published!) 

Thanks for reading this, any comments welcome as always.

Shawn

 

References:

Caton-Rosser, M. S. (2006), ‘ Case studies of how community media enact media literacy and activism in the public sphere’. PhD Thesis

Harding, A. (2005). Magic Moments: Collaborations between Artists and Young People. Black Dog Publishing. London, UK

Light At The End Of The PhD Literature Review Tunnel……

I think I see some light.  I’ll be at the end soon!  

Or is that just another oncoming train?

(Photo credit: www.pbase.com/camera0bug/image/13107594)

Debating process, product and progression in community media

A popular debate in community arts & media is based on the dichotomy and tensions inherent within the notions of process and product, and which state to value the most, and what ethics and emphasis are placed on each.  The liberal position (or more accurately, the centrist conservative position), is to compromise and value both elements in equal measure, which demonstrates a project that healthy in both regards.  The radicals on either wing denote the quality of process as protection of the safe environment for the participants, or the necessity of the product to instil a pride that process alone can never deliver.  

I argue that these tensions are valid, but flawed.  The foundation principles of my research is to analyse beyond the project, and therefore, beyond the product.  The process/product debate reaches a glass ceiling of ambition as it misses out the vital element that gives meaning to what product and process actually mean – progression.  Without a notion of what happens after a project, no real value can be placed on the elements in the project, as there is nothing to measure it against. 

Highlighting value in process or product alone in isolation of what comes afterwards devalues the work being done in both of those states, and fails to take notice of the actual impact that has taken place as a result of both of those states.  There is a vital consideration missed in this debate, that can only be viewed when you consider the position of the organisations that are funded to run these participatory projects.  The reason they are funded is that they have as their offer the product of participatory practice – that is to say, their product is process led production.  Process is product, and when working in a participatory way in community arts & media, and the two are not capable of being separate entities. 

The product that community media offers, to sell for funding, is the process way of working that leads to an end production of some kind.  Once a facilitator values one element over the other, they are devaluing their entire offer.  In pedagogical terms, the product is the lesson and the process is the education.  In the same spirit as B.F. Skinner’s famous quote, “education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten”, thus, the process continues long after what has been made has been produced.

Post-action theorizing in community media (Laws vs Tools)

A large tendency in community media analysis is to post-theorize, for example attaching Paulo Freire’s theories of Dialogic Pedagogy to activity that has already happened, even if the facilitator had never heard of Freire and his ideas.  I feel that is still useful as it helps us understand the dynamics of what is happening better, and it is like evoking Newton if we didn’t understand why a cup falls on the floor – but many would view that as different.  Positivists would say that Newton’s law of Gravity is an undisputable ‘natural law’, whereas Freire’s theory of Conscientization is a ‘social notion’, which can be disputed and is therefore flawed if treated as a law.    

Enter stage left, Emile Durkheim and his ‘Rules of Sociological Method’ where he advocated for empirical social phenomena to be treated as natural law, with his theory of ‘social facts’,  and for sociologists (social scientists) to treat ‘social facts as things’.

Now to make my position clear, I conduct sociological research, but I have no claims on aiming to make social science a natural science, just in the same way I have no desire to view community media in the same way as mass media – they have different roles for different purposes for different contexts.  Social Science can reveal things that the Natural Sciences can’t, and vice versa – and they both provide tools for us to understand the world better.  Whether then called ’tools’ or  ’laws’ I’ll leave for someone else to debate. 

As a tool, Paulo Freire’s ideas are central theories for understanding the nuances of the pedagocical aspects of community media and informal education dynamics, just as the theory of gravity, + Newton’s theory of motion, are essential tools for understanding why, if you are on a moving train and bounce a ball in front of you, it doesn’t fall into your feet.

Of course, over the course of time, undisputable theories become facts, such as with gravtiy, and that is fair enough.  The things sociologists study are less tangible and material, but that doesn’t make them any less ‘real’ or universal.  Right on cue, enter stage right Marx (in toe with the spirit of Hegel) with Historical Materialism, seeing the events of history as measurable material processes not fleeting mental whims.  Laws of history that are evidence of the state of the present.  More tools for social science ammunition to position social science as natural law.  The worship at the alter of the “fact”.  

That is all fine, but solid facts can be boring anyway.  I like the ongoing mystery of a tantalising idea.

The Merchants of Cool (the dangers of community media in a compromising position)

Here is a clip from the documentary Dr Jared Ball mentioned in his ‘Is Hip Hop Mass Media’ lecture posted in the previous post in this blog.

This documentary realtes to some of the more challenging areas I’m going to touch on in my PhD, asking awkward questions relating to Community Media.  Many community media production companies and community media centres say that some of their funding comes from projects where young people opinions are being consulted, not necessarily for multi-national corporations such as Nike advertising agencies, but by local cultural institutions such as galleries, museums and also city councils.  The topics of these consultations are usually more social or cultural than corporate; ranging from young people attitudes towards climate change, recycling, graffiti, the appeal (or not) of a museum, solutions for social problems such as knife crime and drugs, etc. 

The consultations aren’t as embarressingly crass as the one shown in this clip, but would be creative where the young people get to make films exploring these ideas, to stimulate debate amongst other young people when they are screened.  I have been involved in many of these types of projects over the past 15 years or so.  The uncomfortable questions still remains – is this exploitation of the young people, and if not, where is the line?

My quick answer is that this is where the radar of the of the community media facilitator must come into action, as I have turned down money from projects that I have viewed as blatent exploitation and have suspected were just ‘tick-box’ exercises and or wanting cheap labour from student media crews.  Other times I have seen the educational value of taking on a project to run with young people, whilst also recognising the benefit the funder of the outcome.  Should we apologise for this, or rather run a responsible educational experience with eyes open in the capitalist funding landscape that we operate in, in the UK and USA particularly?

These are thorny issues with no quick answers.  This all needs much more unpicking.  Funded organisations with broad social aims have for decades, which many community media education organisation fall under the unbrella of, have been aware of how much the donor conditionality of the funder affects the project and its outcome.  On the sharper end of community media, such as a radio station operating in an oppressive political climate, any funding at all can comprise their position to criticise certain elements of society in their broadcasts, eventually becoming puppets of the state.  These concerns have largly ignored the other less ‘broadcast based’ areas of community media, such as film clubs and school projects, but the awkward questions need to be asked.  (For more on how these ideas relate to a school context and the Hidden Curriculum - see this previous post here.)

Here is the ‘Merchants of Cool’ clip, and when watching this, if you are a youth worker of some description, ask yourself what these activities would look like in your own working context, and  judge where the line is.  Lots of chin stroking – more to discuss.

Academic Blogging Workshop

In the morning I’m giving a working about my experiences of academic blogging at UWE.

I’ve found, since I started a blog in 2006, that even though I haven’t kept it up religiously, on the whole it has been useful.

In part an on-line note book, and in other ways a place to journalistically (or scholarly) respond to current events, a blog forces you to have an opinion, and to put your head above the parapet to stand by your convictions.

Things to remember to mention;

- Anon or not?

- Dynamic media note book

- Lateral references to core subject (can be looser than core research question)

- Personal archive of ideas and references

- The ‘cultural practice’ of blogging (discipline & confidence)

- Confidence to “publicly” play with ideas

- Precious with sharing data observations (danger of….??)

- research content to research process to field of interest ((((and possibly to personal day to day stuff?? – it’s ALL connected to YOU!!))))

- To be worried, or not be worried about “audience”. (About if any audience at all, and if that should affect style of writing!!)

Distant light and the end of far far tunnel

Today had a meeting with fellow PhD student Emma Agusita, whose subject is very close to mine. Really good to catch up with her and it was mutually benificial. Peer sharing is a good thing!

Talked about many things, including the slippery ground that is PhD research, the shifting sands that is the ‘research question’, and the importance of theory in practice. We also agreed to write an abstract together for a conference next year.

Good to have a comrade near!!!