Improving public spaces for young people : the contribution of participatory research

The objectives of this chapter are to examine the contribution of public spaces to the wellbeing of young people and how participatory action research can be used as a process tool for contextually responsive, collaborative, iterative and multi-method community level practice. The addition of a spatial frame to practice can open up unexpected alliances and opportunities for enhancing the wellbeing of people.

A participatory framework for researching and evaluating communication for development and social change

The growing dominance of project planning cycles and results-based management in development over the past 20 years has significant implications for the effective evaluation of communication for development and social change and the sustainability of these processes. These approaches to development and evaluation usually give priority to the linear, logical framework (or log frame) approach promoted by many development institutions. This tends to emphasize upward accountability approaches to development and its evaluation, so that development is driven by exogenous rather than endogenous models of development and social change. Such approaches are underpinned by ideas of preplanning, and predetermination of what successful out -comes look like. In this way, outcomes of complex interventions tend to be reduced to simple, cause-effect processes and the categorization of things, including people (Chambers and Pettit 2004; Eyben 2011). This runs counter to communication for development approaches, which prioritize engagement, relationships, empowerment and dialogue as important components for positive social change.

Critical reflections on the use of participatory methodologies to build evaluation capacities in international development organisations

There has been a greater focus on strengthening evaluation capacity building (ECB) within development organisations in recent years. This can be attributed in part to the growing appreciation of the value of participatory and collaborative forms of evaluation. Evaluation is increasingly seen as an ongoing learning process and an important means of strengthening capacity and improving organisational performance (Horton et al., 2003:7). While there are many benefits of using participatory methodologies in ECB projects, our experiences and a review of the literature in this area highlight the many challenges, issues and contradictions that can affect the success of such ECB efforts. We discuss these issues, drawing on our learnings from the ongoing participatory action research (PAR) project 'Assessing Communication for Social Change’ (AC4SC). This four year project, which began in 2007, is a collaboration between communication and development academics and evaluation specialists from two Australian universities and communication for development practitioners and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) staff in the NGO Equal Access Nepal (EAN). The aim is to develop, implement, and evaluate a participatory methodology for assessing the social change impacts of community radio programs produced by EAN. It builds on previous projects that used ethnographic action research (EAR) methodology (Tacchi et al., 2007).

Critical reflections on the use of participatory methodologies to build evaluation capacities in international development organisations

"In this chapter the authors present a critique of Participatory Evaluation as worked in development projects, in this case, in Nepal. The article works between established claims that Participatory Evaluation builds capacity at programmatic and organisational levels, and the specific experiences of these claims in the authors’ current work. They highlight the need to address key difficulties such as high turn-over of staff and resulting loss of capacity to engage in Participatory Evaluation, and the difficulty of communication between academic as compared with local practical wisdoms. A key issue is the challenge of addressing the inevitable issues of power inequities that such approaches encounter. While Participatory Evaluation has been around for some time, it has only enjoyed more widespread recognition of its value in comparatively recent times, with its uptake in international development environments. To this extent, the practice is still in its early stages of development, and Jo, June and Michael’s work contributes to strengthening and more comprehensively understanding it. With regard to the meta-theme of this publication, this chapter is an example of how context not only influences the methodology to be used and the praxis of how it is to be used, but contributes to early explication of the core nature of an emerging methodology."

Making media participatory: Digital storytelling

From journalism to social media, the practices of our professional storytellers continue to evolve and change along with our storytelling institutions and their functions. Comprehending these developments is a key problem of contemporary media and cultural studies. Are the politics of representation giving way to a new progressive politics of self-representation and direct participation? Or, instead, are these new genres of self-representation part of a more general demotic turn in the function of contemporary media? Do media merely mediate or amplify cultural identities, or is media functionality becoming, closer to that of a translator or even an author of identities? How can we know if the changing actor-networks of storytelling contribute to a wider democratisation, a reshaping of the hierarchies of voice and agency? This chapter considers the place of one specific critical participatory media production practice known as 'digital storytelling’ in addressing these larger questions of socio-cultural change.

UbiOpticon : participatory sousveillance with urban screens and mobile phone cameras

In many cities around the world, surveillance by a pervasive net of CCTV cameras is a common phenomenon in an attempt to uphold safety and security across the urban environment. Video footage is being recorded and stored, sometimes live feeds are being watched in control rooms hidden from public access and view. In this study, we were inspired by Steve Mann’s original work on sousveillance (surveillance from below) to examine how a network of camera equipped urban screens could allow the residents of Oulu in Finland to collaborate on the safekeeping of their city. An agile, rapid prototyping process led to the design, implementation and ‘in the wild’ deployment of the UbiOpticon screen application. Live video streams captured by web cams integrated at the top of 12 distributed urban screens were broadcast and displayed in a matrix arrangement on all screens. The matrix also included live video streams of two roaming mobile phone cameras. In our field study we explored the reactions of passers-by and users of this screen application that seeks to inverse Bentham’s original panopticon by allowing the watched to be watchers at the same time. In addition to the original goal of participatory sousveillance, the system’s live video feature sparked fun and novel user-led apprlopriations.

Using Participatory Design (PD) as youth engagement strategy to inform design and development of evidence-based wellbeing e-tools

The paper presents a participatory design research framework as a primary method for structuring youth engagement, participation and contribution to the design, development and usability evaluation of three evidencebased e-tools for wellbeing, which include smart phone mobile apps as well as e-health websites. The three projects are part of a series of six e-tools part of Safe and Supportive program under Young and Well CRC. The participatory design method, developed by Zelenko (2012) for application in design of online health promoting technologies, was further piloted in partnership with Inspire USA for specific application within the CRC, deploying a combination of creative design workshops and speculative design activities in developing e-tool prototypes with young people. This paper presents the resulting participatory research framework as it was implemented across the e-tool projects to facilitate active youth participation in co-designing the e-tools and ensuring the final designs are relevant to young people and deliver health messages in engaging ways. The principles of Participatory Design (PD) that inform the new framework include a high degree of participant agency in creative decisionmaking and a commitment to the process of co-designing, with young people working alongside designers and developers. The paper will showcase how the PD framework was applied across three projects to increase young people’s contribution to final design outcome.

Using social media to create a participatory library service : an Australian study

Public libraries are increasingly using social media in an attempt to meet users in their own spaces. Social media can be useful when used to create a participatory library service – to engage with users. However, there has been little empirical investigation into the success of social media use by public libraries. This article reports on the findings of a research project that explored the use of social media by Australian public libraries. Two organisations participated in case studies that involved interviews, document analysis, and social media observation. To contextualise the use of social media in the case study organisations, a sub study was undertaking involving observation of an additional 24 public libraries across Australia. This article focuses on the findings from the observation sub study. It presents and applies a methodology for classifying social media content to determine whether the sample libraries’ social media use is indicative of a participatory approach to service delivery. This article explores how a range of social media platforms are used by the sample libraries and considers what ‘best practice’ in participatory library service looks like. The two case study organisations’ use of social media is highlighted as exemplary practice.

Participatory Data Analytics: Collaborative interfaces for data composition and visualisation

This research proposes the development of interfaces to support collaborative, community-driven inquiry into data, which we refer to as Participatory Data Analytics. Since the investigation is led by local communities, it is not possible to anticipate which data will be relevant and what questions are going to be asked. Therefore, users have to be able to construct and tailor visualisations to their own needs. The poster presents early work towards defining a suitable compositional model, which will allow users to mix, match, and manipulate data sets to obtain visual representations with little-to-no programming knowledge. Following a user-centred design process, we are subsequently planning to identify appropriate interaction techniques and metaphors for generating such visual specifications on wall-sized, multi-touch displays.

The role of interpersonal influence in budget decision making: The Canadian public library experience

This study determined factors which influenced Canadian provincial (state) politicians when making funding decisions for public libraries. Using the case study methodology, Canadian provincial/state-level funding for public libraries in the 2009-2010 fiscal year was examined. The data were analyzed to determine whether Cialdini’s theory of influence and specifically any of the six tactics of influence (i.e., commitment and consistency, authority, liking, social proof, scarcity, and reciprocity) were instrumental in these budgetary decision-making processes. Findings show the principles of “authority,” “consistency and commitment,” and “liking” were relevant, and that “liking” was especially important to these decisions.

Little boxes : changing perceptions and including young people in socially sustainable participatory planning

In recent years, a great deal has been written about the benefits and ethics of including young people in participative decision-making. This has been accompanied by a burgeoning interest in including their views in participatory planning exercises that has not always been realised in practice. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the perceptions of adults and young people involved in a participatory planning exercise on Australia‟s Gold Coast, we believe that there are two major hurdles to the „full‟ engagement of young people that are in some respects two sides of the same coin: the sometimes paternalistic perceptions and often dismissive attitude that many adults have towards the participation of young people; and the perceptions that young people may have of themselves and their subordinate place in an adult-dominated planning environment. Together, such views act to place limitations on the participation of young people because they set up unrealistic expectations for both adult and younger participants in terms of how and why young people participate, and what this participation should „look and feel‟ like. In this paper, through the metaphor of boxes, we propose a number of issues that should be addressed when involving young people in participatory planning processes to ensure the most from their participation for all involved.

Book review : "Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship by Claire Bishop"

In the years since Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998) was published, a plethora of books (Shannon Jackson’s Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics [2011], Nato Thompson’s Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2011 [2011], Grant Kester’s Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art [2004], Pablo Helguera’s Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Material and Techniques Handbook [2011]), conferences and articles have surfaced creating a rich and textured discourse that has responded to, critiqued and reconfigured the proposed social utopias of Bourriaud’s aesthetics. As a touchstone for this emerging discourse, Relational Aesthetics outlines in a contemporary context the plethora of social and process-based art forms that took as their medium the ‘social’. It is, however, Clare Bishop’s book Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso), that offers a deeper art historical and theoretically considered rendering of this growing and complicated form of art, and forms a central body of work in this broad constellation of writings about participatory art, or social practice art/socially engaged art (SEA), as it is now commonly known...

A participatory library model for university libraries

This research investigated the ways academic libraries are using social media and adopting participatory principles in their programs and services. Using the Grounded Theory method the research developed an empirically derived model for participatory libraries. The research revealed three core categories representing the participatory library: community, empowerment, and experience. The research provides library professionals, researchers and the library community, with a fresh perspective and holistic picture of the contemporary library. The findings can be used to guide the development of participatory libraries in Australia and internationally.

DIY media architecture: Open and participatory approaches to community engagement

Media architecture’s combination of the digital and the physical can trigger, enhance, and amplify urban experiences. In this paper, we examine how to bring about and foster more open and participatory approaches to engage communities through media architecture by identifying novel ways to put some of the creative process into the hands of laypeople. We review technical, spatial, and social aspects of DIY phenomena with a view to better understand maker cultures, communities, and practices. We synthesise our findings and ask if and how media architects as a community of practice can encourage the ‘open-sourcing’ of information and tools allowing laypeople to not only participate but become active instigators of change in their own right. We argue that enabling true DIY practices in media architecture may increase citizen control. Seeking design strategies that foster DIY approaches, we propose five areas for further work and investigation. The paper begs many questions indicating ample room for further research into DIY Media Architecture.