MEDIA MAKING & CRITICAL DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP: PRACTICE-RESEARCH IN

ACTION

Professor David McGillivrayChair in Event & Digital Cultures

School of Media, Culture Society, University of the West of Scotland

@dgmcgillivray

Mobile Methods for Researching Bodies in Motion Seminar Series, University of British Columbia,

30th January 2017

• Digital & social media empowers people as ‘creators’ rather than just ‘consumers’ – the prosumer (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010)

• Digital & social media can decentralize, empower, mobil(e)ise (Hands, 2011) and organize (Rheingold, 2002) • Digital & social media enables challenge to established sources of knowledge & authority • Digital & social media provides the “hope - that we are seeing a shift away from a 'sit back and be told' culture

towards more of a 'making and doing' culture” (Gauntlett, 2011: 8)BUT• Legitimate concerns over risk, privacy, rights• Worries over skills and competencies to cope and integrate • Issues around the availability of technological infrastructure necessary to facilitate creative digital making • Access to digital and social media platforms is differential:

not just in terms of having the equipment and being connected, but more crucially, about the skills, confidence, and awareness necessary to use available resources and tools in a fruitful manner (Gauntlett, 2011)

markers of class such as parents’ levels of education and occupation influence the habitus of young people, which in turn influences their digital tastes…the link between cultural capital, habitus and cultural form produces a socially

entrenched digital inequality rather than an economically entrenched digital divide (Willig et al 2015: 5)

SITUATING THE ‘DIGITAL’

BACKGROUND CONTEXT

• Building on some recent projects: • #citizenrelay (www.citizenrelay.net) and Digital Commonwealth

• Intrigued by how people deal with the 'affordances' of digital and social media

• Interested in what the ‘digital’ means to learners, teachers, community members and whether access and use are unevenly experienced according to economic, social and cultural variables (Daniellison, 2011)

• From a research perspective, interested in understanding how ‘we live and act in a context that is, today, almost always co-constituted and entangled with digital technologies, content, presence and communication’ (Pink et al, 2015: 2)

MEDIA LANDSCAPE OF MAJOR SPORT EVENTS

Accredited media Sponsors Strict media guidelines

Narrative control

Alternative narratives

Independent mediaUnaccredited media Citizen & community media

DIGITAL COMMONWEALTH

Creative response to the Commonwealth (Games) from across Scotland, involving a diverse range of individuals/communities

Community media clusters-community media cafes and digital storytelling workshops

Schools programme - in-school digital storytelling workshops with primary and secondary learners across Scotland’s local authorities

Creative voices- documentary film, creative writing and community songwriting around UWS campuses

• Enshrining critical digital citizenship in formal and informal learning settings so that people are asked to “ponder how digitally mediated publics operate and think carefully about matters of ownership, privacy, security and risk” (McGillivray, McPherson, Jones & McCandlish, 2015, p.13)

• (digital) media literacy imperative if people are to effectively exploit the opportunities presented by an apparently more democratic media environment to create, rather than just consume, content

• Need to balance the production of artefacts without unpacking how this media is made, where it will be hosted and how an external audience engages with it

• With Digital Commonwealth a key aim was to make media using the devices that many people have in their pockets whilst also learning, by stealth, about ‘digital’ literacies and associated digital rights (Livingstone, 2016)

THE PRACTICE-RESEARCH PREMISE

GUIDING PRINCIPLES •The ‘common-weal’ (def. for the common good) – supporting communities (particularly those who are socio-economically disadvantaged and not well represented in mainstream media) to have a voice through self generated media and creative practice•Common (s) purpose – expressed via the notion of creative commons licensing and a shared sense of purpose in creatively responding to the themes brought about by the Commonwealth Games coming to Scotland•Ownership – we believe that, where possible, our participants should host their own content and retain ownership of it. The Digital Commonwealth project has no intention of commercializing the content you generate and our focus is on supporting targeted communities and individuals to produce and share their own content•Collaboration – from the partners involved in delivery to the participants working together to produce creative content. Individual or group partners adhere to the guiding principles as they contribute to the Digital Commonwealth project•Sharing - open media for non commercial use, including technology, design ideas and Creative Commons licenses•Accessibility - in terms of the tools and technologies used to generate content and ensuring that we put as few obstacles as possible in the way of individuals and groups getting involved as content creators•Archiving – by producing digital enabled content, we will be contributing to a larger archive of community-generated materials produced around the Commonwealth Games. This is will be preserved by the National Library of Scotland for future generations to access

THEMES

• Place (local, national, international,

virtual)

• People (diversity, migration,

participation)

• Culture (language, art, music, film,

literature, sport)

• Exchange (common-weal, values,

learning)

COMMUNITY MED IA CAFES & SYMPOS IUM

• Across 4 Scottish regions • 16 Cafes, offering tasters in

blogging, video, audio and social media

• Informal, awareness raising, access to project

C REAT IV E VO ICE S• 3 creative practices (creative

writing, community songwriting & documentary) supported by UWS lecturers and post-graduate students

• Older adults, multicultural groups, people living with dementia

• 80 page anthology, 12 original songs and 6 films produced

• Participants performed at a showcase event

SCHOOLS PROGRAMME

• In-school digital storytelling workshops with primary and secondary learners in Scotland’s local authorities

• 57 schools, 23 out of 32 local authorities, 585 participated

• transition initiatives (primary & secondary working together)

• 'creative citizenship' responding to the themes of project – ‘place’, ‘people’, ‘culture’ & ‘exchange’

‘OWNED’ STORIES• Schools proposed how they would respond

to the project themes• Focused on 'ownership' of stories and

relation to curriculum activity• Encouraged hosting on own platforms

OPEN RESOURCES• Provided a ‘framework’ for expert practitioners to work w/ schools, community & community groups on:• Blogging• Audio• Video• Social media

G A M E S -T I M E C I T I Z E N M E D I A

FROM PRINCIPLES TO PRACTICE?

• Who owns the content that I produce and share with the Digital Commonwealth project?• What if I want to withdraw my content from the project website? • How will the content hosted on the project website be decided upon?• Does my content have to be of professional standard before it will appear on the Digital

Commonwealth website?• Video: what platforms does Digital Commonwealth want us to use?• Audio: what platforms does Digital Commonwealth want us to use?• Do you have a preferred blogging platform that we should use for the Digital

Commonwealth?• Do you want us to share our content using popular social media channels?• How will I (we) submit content to the Digital Commonwealth?• What permissions do I need to get before submitting my content to Digital Commonwealth?• Are there any restrictions on what content I can produce?

SOME EXAMPLES

“It is also your responsibility to ensure your content (whether audio, video, blog posts or social media) complies with the terms of conditions of the platform you use to host it (Youtube, Vimeo, Audioboo, Soundcloud, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter etc). You should also avoid including music in your content unless it is your own and/or you own all the rights to it” (www.digitalcommonwealth.co.uk)

“For your content to be hosted on the Digital Commonwealth website you will need to supply consent forms if people are featured in video or audio.  It is also good practice to ensure that when writing blog posts or other creative responses that you ensure the people you are talking about know what you’re writing for and where the end result will be hosted (and for what purpose). For legal reasons anyone under the age of 18 featured in film or video will have to have completed a special minors consent form signed by a parent or legal guardian. For this reason please do not upload content featuring people under the age of 18 unless you can supply the required consent documentation to the Digital Commonwealth project coordinator. You also need to be aware of the need for special permissions should you produce film on private property” ((www.digitalcommonwealth.co.uk)

PARTICIPATORY PRACTICE AS RESEARCH• Legitimacy:

• credibility and intentions• Power differentials and media

politics: • marginalised or disenfranchised

populations• Participant fears over the

implications of being ‘public’ and the paucity of ‘resources’ (economic, cultural and social) communities have in their possession when it comes to media

• Responsibility for outputs & outcomes

• Trust – building and sustaining• who initiated?• are objectives shared?

• Ethics: dynamic and ongoing

POSITIONING THE RESEARCHER

• The researchers were active participants in the project in keeping with the practice of co-production, engaged in:

“developing knowledge…based on experiential learning, reflective practice or participatory action research” (Green, Sobers, Zamenopoulos, Chapain & Turner, 2016, p.155).

• For both #citizenrelay and Digital Commonwealth the embedded practice-researcher position helped to form trust with the participants and creative practitioners involved in the project

• Re dissemination, Digital Commonwealth drew on action research approaches in the way outputs and outcomes informed, and were informed by, partners:• Project team penned blog posts, used collaborative document sharing and presented their insights

to a range of participant, policy and academic ‘publics’• Research is often viewed as objective, detached, neutral, distant, with the emphasis on

finding the right tools to unearth a singular truth but practice-research approaches can effectively draw out complex ‘insights’ about a cultural practice

• There is a need for more embedded, co-produced efforts that re-imagine the researcher and the communities he/she works with as partners in the research endeavour

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

• Having ‘principles’ and ‘procedures’ doesn’t replace need for sensitive interactions with contributors

• In ‘project-focused’ media activity, ongoing relationships and ‘cultural memory’ can be problematic: archiving

• Need to embed critical digital citizenship in where publics are asked – through practice – to consider how digitally mediated publics operate, thinking about matters of ownership, privacy, security and identity.

• Integrating ‘making and doing’ with ‘thinking critically’ about the benefits and dis-benefits of pervasive digital media in and outside of their communities (e.g. schools)

• Process-focused approach to ethics required in participatory (digital) research• Securing ‘permissions’ can feel invasive and alters the nature of

relationship.• ‘informed consent’ can be problematic so need an ongoing

‘conversation about consent’ to take place

DISCUSSION&

QUESTIONS