Facilitating gender-affirming participatory visual research in embodied and online spaces

This article analyses the visions, careers, and companies of Jack Ma of Alibaba and Geng Le of Blue City. Jack Ma is a well-known business leader and visionary, whereas the less well-known Geng Le only began to receive more attention since launching a successful gay dating app in 2012. The article focuses on the personal narratives and visions of these two IT entrepreneurs. It provides new perspectives on the role of individual entrepreneurs in relation to the Chinese state’s global ambitions and vision of creating a “strong internet country.” It argues that the commercialisation and platformisation of the Chinese internet, and the growing transnational nature of Chinese IT companies, serve to make them more, not less, co-dependent of the state and its visions. The internet’s emancipatory potential is today increasingly conflated with consumption, and online spaces and social relations are subject to both commodification and datafication.

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Photo-Based Evaluation: A Method for Participatory Evaluation With Adolescents

American Journal of Evaluation ◽

10.1177/1098214020927785 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 109821402092778

Author(s):

Deinera Exner-Cortens ◽

Kathleen C. Sitter ◽

Marisa Van Bavel ◽

Alysia Wright

Keyword(s):

Health Promotion ◽

Evaluation Method ◽

Prevention Programs ◽

Research Process ◽

Youth Engagement ◽

Youth Health ◽

Visual Evaluation ◽

Healthy Relationships ◽

Visual Research ◽

Translation Tools

Actively engaging adolescents in meaningful program evaluation is a topic of growing interest. One possibility for such engagement is the use of photographs as part of visual evaluation, so that youth can directly engage with the research process. In this Method Note, we describe the development and implementation of a participatory, photo-based evaluation method for youth health promotion/prevention programs. Youth in this study were participants in a gender-transformative healthy relationships program for boys. We present literature supporting the use of photographs as a visual research method and for involving youth as active participants in evaluation, and explore the feasibility, utility, and acceptability of this innovative application of existing methods based on researcher experience and youth feedback. We conclude with implications for photo-based evaluation of health promotion/prevention programs, highlighting the promise of this method for promoting critical youth engagement in evaluation and the creation of meaningful knowledge translation tools.

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“We’re a Part of This City, Too”: An Examination of the Politics of Representation of D.C. Native via #DCNativesDay

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/2056305120984446 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 205630512098444

Author(s):

Loren Saxton Coleman

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

Cultural Analysis ◽

Black Communities ◽

Politics Of Representation ◽

Marginalized Communities ◽

Movie Theaters ◽

Online Spaces ◽

Twitter Users ◽

The City

This cultural analysis explores how D.C. natives represented themselves on Twitter via #DCNativesDay. The analysis found that Twitter users engaged in hashtag activism to share stories about their connection to place(s) (e.g., movie theaters, neighborhoods, public schools) in the city that were integral in the construction of their individual and collective Black D.C. native identities. Constructed identities were not monolithic, and users engaged in some self-reflexivity. The users’ emphasis on place seemed to signify reclamation of changing city landscapes and legitimacy in the city. Ultimately, this research raises questions about how alternative representations that map marginalized communities onto city spaces in online spaces can create possibilities of transformation for Black communities during gentrification in offline spaces.

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Silent Voices, Absent Bodies, and Quiet Methods: Revisiting the Processes and Outcomes of Personal Knowledge Production Through Body-Mapping Methodologies Among Indigenous Youth

International Journal of Qualitative Methods ◽

10.1177/1609406920987934 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 160940692098793

Author(s):

Darrien Morton ◽

Kelley Bird-Naytowhow ◽

Andrew R. Hatala

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Production ◽

Personal Knowledge ◽

Indigenous Research ◽

Research Methodologies ◽

Body Mapping ◽

Indigenous Youth ◽

Visual Narratives ◽

Visual Research ◽

Theater Program ◽

Indigenous Research Methodologies

At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place of the “personal” and “autobiographical” self in qualitative visual research. We outline a community and partnership-based evaluation of a theater program for Indigenous youth using arts-based body-mapping approaches in Saskatoon, Canada, and explore the methodological limitations of the narrator or artist’s voice and representations to translate personal visual-narratives and personal knowledges they hold. In so doing, we describe how body-mapping methods were adapted and improvised to respond to the silent voices and absent bodies within personal visual-narratives with an epistemological eclecticism handling the limitations of voice and meaningfully engaging the potentiality of quietness. Extending the conceptual and methodological boundaries of the “personal” and “autobiographical” for both narrator and interlocutor, artist and observer, we contribute to debates on the processes and outcomes of personal knowledge production by articulating a generative, ethical, and culturally-grounded project mobilizing body-mapping as a quiet method that pursues self-work—the passionate and emergent practices of working on one’s self and making self appear in non-representational and ceremonial ways.

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Taking Watsuji online: betweenness and expression in online spaces

Continental Philosophy Review ◽

10.1007/s11007-021-09548-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lucy Osler ◽

Joel Krueger

Keyword(s):

Communication Technology ◽

Emotional Expression ◽

Communication Technologies ◽

Phenomenological Analysis ◽

The Internet ◽

Face To Face ◽

Ethical Implications ◽

Shared Experiences ◽

Online Spaces ◽

Contemporary Context

AbstractIn this paper, we introduce the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji’s phenomenology of aidagara (“betweenness”) and use his analysis in the contemporary context of online space. We argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression and engagement. More precisely, we show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji argues that communication technologies—which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces—are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression, shared experiences, and modes of betweenness that would be otherwise inaccessible. Using Watsuji’s phenomenological analysis, we argue that the Internet is not simply a sophisticated form of communication technology that expresses our subjective spatiality (although it is), but that it actually gives rise to new forms of subjective spatiality itself. We conclude with an exploration of how certain aspects of our online interconnections are hidden from lay users in ways that have significant political and ethical implications.

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