Participatory Video new publication

As you know participatory video (also known as PV) is the process of enabling non-experts to make films about (development) issues that they prioritise. Participatory video can be a way for disadvantaged communities to appropriate technology in order to take control of the way in which they are represented and to amplify local voices on key issues of concern to them.

I used participatory video in my doctoral research with two women's groups in Zambia. I will blog more about this experience soon, but in the interim you can see some of the example videos that women made in their first week or two here and here.

If you want to know more about participatory video one great source is PV in a Nutshell. For a more academic and more critical, overview of participatory video you might be interested in a new article that I had the good fortune to be able to write together with PV guru Chris Lunch of Insightshare for the new International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society.

Having myself been trained in use of participatory video by Insightshare, it was great to be asked by one of their founder's to write this piece with him. A lot of the writing about participatory video is (understandably) celebratory but we also took a look at the dark side of so-called-PV as feel-good window-dressing for development-as-usual.

The encyclopedia entry is available here. If you cannot access the article for any reason there is something covering similar here that doesn't infringe any copyright.