Participatory Visual Research. Disentangling Power Dynamics Using Collaborative Techniques

The goal of this panel is to champion a way of doing social research aimed at encouraging the (now recognized) multiple subjective perspectives on reality, questioning the power dynamics enforced by traditional research paradigms. Instead, we encourage the submitting of interdisciplinary research processes designed and developed with the participation and collaboration of the social actors and communities involved in the analyzed phenomenon. A perspective that recognizes subjectivity, authority and responsibility to actors, traditionally considered as “objects” of investigation, and in this way translated as “subjects” within the entire research process from its conceptualization, to its design, the processing of data, the interpretation of the results and finally their dissemination (Decataldo and Russo 2022). This perspective does not deny the competence of the researcher, but rather puts it at the service of other actors.

Furthermore, we encourage studies that apply visual research techniques, which have become a convergence plan between different disciplines with common interests in the methodological field: reflexivity, collaboration, relationship between discourse, social context and production of good practices (Grimshaw 2001; Rose 2016; Pink 2011; Carroll and Mesman 2018). If considering audio-video production as an issue of investigation means analyzing the role of the imagination and self-representation of social actors (Faccioli and Losacco 2010). Designing, within a participatory approach, a research method that uses as main tool the camera enable the researcher and their collaborators to capture aspects of social interactions that often escape the mesh of an exclusively dialogic or narrative approach (Pink 2006).