5 Thesis Nicole Goedhart.pdf

To a certain extent knowledge was generated through active learning in the daily context (testing apps, going on excursions), and policy-makers increasingly learned about people’s daily reality and needs. Establishing a respectful relationship with citizens was central to most of our actions, not ‘collecting data’, but fitting in with local activities and contexts, and the experiences people wanted to share. Different forms of knowledge were put on the

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A well-organised network – good ties and working relations with volunteers and professionals working with digital under-served people

Free WIFI Tailored training in a setting near to their home Access to computers in all community centres in Amsterdam Accessible websites for all citizens

However, not yet….

10 Weekly meeting for the mothers of children who are in elementary school. The focus of the meeting is currently on the Dutch language and parental issues.

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Connecting to other volunteers and Increased visibility; the important role volunteers play in the lives of experts in the field and gaining new people in vulnerable circumstances knowledge: “Think big with people from all different projects leads to new insights’ and ‘you can look to digital inclusion from different angles.” (Reflections of volunteers on co-creation session)

Volunteers

We provided gift certificates to compensate for their time and effort, and play material for children in voluntary care The City of Amsterdam has extended the language and parenting courses10 in elementary schools with digital skills The City of Amsterdam has purchased digital devices for three community centres in three neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. Together with a volunteer organisation we applied for a prize from a national bank and received 5,000 euro to buy digital devices.

Valued being listened to, researchers taking the effort to come to them with genuine interest for their lives, needs and ideas: “We talked today about very important things about information and communication technologies (ICTs), and so on.” (mother after a co-creation session) and “Happy to take part in this’.” (Father, interview)

Citizens

Concrete actions

Active learning and change

Who?

Table 5.4: The benefits of the process for the different stakeholders

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Active learning and change

Have experienced the importance of listening to citizens and improved their understanding of the complexity of people in vulnerable circumstances: “Something we could not have imagined, we are actually in such a different world, then they, by making their living environment more transparent, you come to other insights.”. (policy-maker 1, interview) Felt the need for action; empathy as catalyst for change: “It was the only good way to put the topic on the Agenda. The stories brought a sense of urgency.” and “It [low digital skills] is not so bad. No, it is. We spoke to the citizens ourselves.” (policy-maker 1, interview)

Felt a strong need for advocacy and action

Who?

Policy makers City of Amsterdam

Researchers

Continued However, not yet…. New cooperation’s between public and private parties to work on this topic: “The result of the co-creation sessions should be implemented by themselves [volunteers and professionals], but they didn’t yet.” (policy-maker 2, interview) No quick wins: “It is complicated there is no clear solution; you hope for a simple one…we need to involve several sources. I am really glad we did this.” (policy-maker 1, interview)

Projects initiated by citizens. A dialogue among citizens, policy-makers, educators and professionals.

Concrete actions Subject is now part of one of the main programmes of the City of Amsterdam; Digital skills is a new topic next to language skills and maths skills: “At the end we secured the topic.” (policy-maker 1, interview) The idea of developing apps for young children has been postponed, apps as the solutions are looked at more critically, the laptop arrangement for children is broadened and offers more flexibility and choice. An inspiration day was organised in order to connect volunteers, professionals and business partners and to move the agenda forwards. A second inspiration day is planned for next year. Four new projects have started, all follow on from the report’s recommendations, among others the vlog project with mothers, which they wished to try. The City of Amsterdam launched the Agenda ‘A digital city for and of everyone’. One of the three topics is ‘inclusive city for everyone’, and the actions reflect the recommendations of this research. Highlighted the lack of pedagogical climate and toys for children in an informal care setting. (broadening the topic) Purposefully invested extra time in the dissemination of findings; invited an illustrator to develop provocative illustrations to get the messages across. Attended Policy Strategy meetings Initiated/pushed for follow-up projects, attracted attention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

They used the finding to set a national agenda for digital inclusion and showed willingness to collaborate in future projects. Successfully applied for finance to start a project in which the digital learning needs and skills of citizens will be leading.

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table and valued: the knowledge of adult citizens, children, volunteers, educators, policymakers and researchers; experiential, theoretical, practical, intuitive, and emotional ways of knowing were all valued, exchanged in dialogue sessions and brought together in a final report and agenda for action. The research has vividly highlighted a sense of urgency, leading to ‘ripples’ (Burns, 2007; Trickett & Beehler, 2017) in individual, community and policy systems, as shown in Table 5.4. Ripples that we expect to keep spreading thanks to the greater understanding and awareness of the problem, not only by reading a report or article, but by actually getting in touch with citizens’ detailed stories. Though we managed to put some of the core principles of PAR, as set out by the ICPHR in their ethics position paper, into practice, we could not do so for all them. Two ethical principles were not achieved, namely democratic participation and collective action. They stood at odds with the available resources (in particular time), the wish for quick wins and short-term policy impact. This jeopardized collective learning, did not do justice to the participants’ qualities, and might therefore unintentionally have fed stereotypes of people’s capabilities. The project was shaped and controlled by policy-makers and researchers, and we worked more closely with policy-makers than with citizens.

In fact, citizens mainly functioned at the level of consultation while policy-makers functioned at the level of cooperation in each phase of the project. In other words, the maximization of the participation of those whose life is the subject of the research in all stages of the research process (International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research (ICPHR), 2013a) was severely limited. Second, we could not engage enough citizens in cycles of action and reflection over time. In most cases we met citizens only once, thereby limiting participatory democracy and learning. Though we sometimes felt frustrated about the time we had to invest in keeping the policy-makers of the City of Amsterdam on board, and the continuous shifting emphasis on goals, priorities and perspectives, part of the success of this project is due to their involvement. They facilitated every step in the process, ranging from opening up their networks, organizing practical pre-conditions for the research activities, translating the findings into a policy agenda, which they managed to sell to higher levels, and arranging a major conference to create awareness and shared learning. Moreover, due to their involvement they better understood for whom they work, felt the urgency for action and the importance for (future) participation.

A third critical point is that we were unable to arrange for dialogues between citizens and professionals. Instead, the researchers and volunteers functioned as a bridge between the two worlds, thereby limiting shared learning. Though from former research projects (Abma & Broerse, 2010; Sarti et al., 2017; van Bijleveld et al., 2014) we know how valuable a dialogue is to increase mutual understanding of a multifaceted problem and the willingness to share ownership and to act together; we also know that such a dialogue should be well prepared with a representative group of people. Co-creative knowledge-

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generation requires facilitation so that trust can be built – particularly for a group who feels less confident and does not always have positive experiences in relation to formal institutes, as was the case in this project. But also, professionals should be empowered in their role in order to avoid side-lining and the use of jargon (Elberse et al., 2011). We could not pay enough attention to power issues in such a way that each voice would have been heard, dialogue encouraged and joint ownership created. As a consequence, the power of the insiders’ voice was limited; citizens could not fully show and develop their competences as owners and solvers of the problem. Moreover, the process hardly challenged negative stereotypes of people living in poverty as passive and depending on professionals for solutions, except for the many critical questions we as researchers raised in the problem-solving skills of professionals in relation to the complexity of the daily lives of people living in poverty. Working together, preferably in a shared space, could have stimulated empathy (Castro et al., 2018) – not only for citizens’ difficult lives, but also for people working in bureaucratic institutions, and why they act in the way they do.

This understanding of the working of bureaucratic systems could reduce mistrust or reluctance to contact institutions/policy-makers for necessary applications or putting issues on the agenda. The issues described are not completely new. Back in (1998), Robert Chambers wrote: ‘a repeated experience with PR [participatory research] has been the tension and contradiction between top down bureaucratic cultures and requirements, tending as they do to standardise, simplify and control, and demands generated at the local level, tending as they do to be diverse and complex and to require local-level discretion’ (Chambers, 1998, p. 290). In this project this partly had to do with the sensitive political context, the fact that PAR was new to the policy-makers and that they had to report to different aldermen, which intensified their wish and need to control the project. Obviously, the project’s scarcest resource was time. Building trust and genuine relationships, the development and exchange of ideas, and translating these into action demands time, as many scholars have pointed out (Abma et al., 2019; Pain et al., 2015). So, what constitutes ‘good’ PAR in this specific case? Choices have to be made in any project.

In this project, the limited amount of time forced us to make a choice in the route towards action for social change 1) by facilitating a shared, bottom-up learning process with citizens and other relevant stakeholders, or 2) by facilitating a shared learning process with a focus on policy-makers. Given the scope and urgency of the problem of digital inequality, and the increasing exclusion of people already living in vulnerable circumstances, we believed that creating awareness and action at higher policy levels was more urgent. By working alongside policy-makers and their deadlines, we managed to create momentum in the City of Amsterdam and attract the attention of national policy-makers – not only for the specific problem, but also for working together with all

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stakeholders. Nevertheless, we were not satisfied, and felt a moral duty to continue what we considered an unbalanced and unfinished process. We actively advocated a follow-up project in which we would have the time necessary for good participation with citizens, and this was granted. It shows that what constitutes ‘good’ PAR is not only situational, as many have argued before, but can also be debated. Moreover, it demanded ongoing ethical work (Banks & Brydon-Miller, 2019). Hopefully, the growing recognition of the value of participation and the conditions it requires will help in developing more inclusive practices. It demands that we dare to share our lessons, whether positive or negative. We would encourage researchers to take up the challenge, the willingness to push boundaries, to be creative and to take risks. We hope to have shown that putting at least some of the core ethical principles of PAR into practice in less than flourishing circumstances did create ripples of change: citizens who seldom get a voice at a policy level shared their preferences, needs and knowledge, and the urge for action was clearly felt and acted upon, by professionals, the municipality and beyond.

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Fun, engaging, and easily shareable? Exploring the value of co-creating vlogs with citizens from disadvantaged neigbourhoods

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Abstract The use of vlogs is promising in participatory action research (PAR) that aims to enhance the health and wellbeing of citizens. A vlog is a regular record of thoughts, opinions, or experiences that takes the form of a short video and that people put online for other people to watch and comment on. Vlogs have the potential to reach a wide audience, transcending the local scale of PAR. This paper aims to explore the value of co-creating vlogs by investigating two exploratory studies involving adolescents and women from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We reflected on the co-creation of vlogs by community members and professionals. The results show that co-creating vlogs enabled meaningful engagement of citizens living in vulnerable circumstances and promoted shared learning. Community members who were not involved in the vlog creation were critical of the vlogs. However, watching the vlogs stimulated discussion and reflection. Therefore, dissemination of vlogs in a setting guided by a professional seems to have the potential to facilitate shared learning. Despite the popularity of vlogs, this study highlights the need to carefully consider the use of vlogs in relation to a study’s aims and to respond to (ethical) concerns.

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6.1 | Introduction Participatory action research (PAR) is increasingly recognized as an appropriate approach to use to enhance the health and well-being of citizens living in disadvantaged circumstances. PAR has the potential to empower citizens regarding issues that affect them by engaging them in shared learning and action in an attempt to co-produce better worlds (Bradbury et al., 2019; Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995; Khanlou & Peter, 2005). The research outcomes are often local and therefore generalization and scalability of outcomes are generally low (Greenhalgh et al., 2016). There have therefore been calls for strategies to scale the outcomes of PAR to a wider population level. It has been argued that digital media could play a role in increasing impact beyond the locality of projects (Lunch & Lunch, 2006). Within PAR, creative qualitative research methods (e.g. creating drawings, photocollages, and videos) are often used. Creative methods give participants the opportunity to share in a less text-based manner their own stories instead of answering researchers’ questions (Kara, 2015). Moreover, they provide room for different types of knowledge, like embodied knowledge and emotions, and facilitate reflexive processes (Abma et al., 2019).

Vlogs, in addition, are considered promising regarding scaling outcomes to a wider audience and thereby might transcend the local characteristics of PAR. In this study, we reflect on two small-scale exploratory cases, which are nested in two larger PAR studies that were done in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, one about the digital inclusion of women and one about health promotion with adolescents from disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Dedding et al., 2017, 2021; Lems et al., 2019, 2020).

Promises of vlogs A vlog or video blog is a regular record of thoughts, opinions, or experiences that takes the form of a short video and that people put online for other people to watch and comment on. Vlogs are usually about niche interests, ranging from exchanging advice on make-up to discussing personal (health) problems, and are aimed at a specific target group (Lutkenhaus et al., 2019). Creating a vlog does not necessarily require expensive equipment or professional (editing) skills. Although some successful vloggers have professional teams and equipment, often a smartphone is used to record the video and editing is kept basic. In 2018, 400 hours of videos were uploaded on YouTube every minute (Smith, n.d.) and a large proportion of these were vlogs. Co-creating vlogs is a form of participatory video – an often-studied, popular participatory methodology used to engage people in disadvantaged situations (Adams, 2010; Gubrium et al., 2014). It is the collaborative process of creating videos that incorporates art, storytelling, poetry, music, and/or drama and that aims to document and involve

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participants in (social) issues, reveal hidden social relations, communicate knowledge, and stimulate collective action (Benjamin-Thomas et al., 2019; Lunch & Lunch, 2006; Milne et al., 2012; Roberts & Lunch, 2015). Several promises of participatory video are documented which may also apply to cocreated vlogs. First, participatory video destabilizes hierarchical power relations by providing ‘a practice of looking “alongside” rather than “at” research subjects’ (Kindon, 2003: 142). Participatory video might help citizens in vulnerable circumstances to articulate knowledge, lived experiences, and skills. This process could reinforce shared learning between the community members, researchers, and policymakers involved. It may, therefore, also be considered to be a powerful approach to use to create collaborative action in response to the things that have been learned (Bradbury et al., 2019). Moreover, participatory video stimulates individual learning about the topic at stake. Participatory videos might also help to create action beyond the research setting because they enable viewers, such as peers and experts, to learn vicariously. Vicarious learning, a term originally coined by Bandura (1962), means learning by observing the behaviour (verbal and non-verbal) of others (via video).

Videos can become tangible outcomes for those involved in the participatory process and for researchers, which contributes to the dissemination of research (Koningstein & Azadegan, 2018; Lunch & Lunch, 2006). The dissemination of the outcomes of PAR projects, including participatory videos, is, however, usually challenging, time consuming, costly, and outside the scope of the research (Abma et al., 2019). This could limit the impact beyond their immediate context and potential to support transformational action. In our increasingly digital society, in which time and place have different dimensions, vlogs seem to have more potential to reach a wider audience than more traditional videos. Research analysing the content of successful (commercial) vlogs, e.g. the beauty vlogs of Zoe Sugg, which have over 11 million followers (Berryman & Kavka, 2017), shows that professional vloggers are able to establish an imaginary interpersonal relationship (Sakib et al., 2020). Vloggers want to be authentic; they are ordinary people speaking in their own language in their own environment (Morris & Anderson, 2015) and are able to ‘cement ties of intimacy’ (Berryman & Kavka, 2017). Such successful examples contribute to the promise of the role vlogs could play in transcending the limited spread of PAR beyond the local context.

So far, however, research about the potential of vlogs to reach a wider audience and transform health and social well-being has mainly focused on professional vloggers, also called ‘influencers’ or ‘YouTubers’ (Jawad et al., 2015; Nour et al., 2017; Sakib et al., 2020). The optimism that such vlogs raise about their potential to reach a wider audience

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may well be dependent on the types of vloggers studied. Moreover, generalization of results is difficult since, as far as we know, most studies are conducted in a controlled (experimental) setting using fictional vlog characters or scripted vlogs. The effect of non-professional vlogs in the real world is unknown. We only know from research in the field of patient participation that vlogs made by and for patients might enable vicarious learning among patients (e.g. Chen et al., 2018; Huh et al., 2014).

Creating synergy between participation and communication We noticed that the promise of vlogs resonated with policymakers and researchers in our PAR projects; they spoke enthusiastically about the idea of co-creating vlogs with citizens to engage them in intervention/policy development. Co-creating vlogs was labelled as a ‘nice, easy, shareable, quick solution’ to improve the health and social well-being of disadvantaged communities, as illustrated by the following quote from a pitch drafted by professionals10: We are going to offer the children to make the best, most cool, the most creative, the most amazing tutorial. […] This vlog goes immediately viral because they are making it in their own style and their own language. […] It is approachable, simple, accessible, you get participation. […] you build a bridge between information the municipality wants to share and the people who find it really, really complicated. We mostly found that critical reflection on the use of vlogs was lacking. We addressed this research gap by conducting two exploratory studies nested in two larger PAR projects that aimed to improve the health and well-being of citizens from disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Combining the cases is off added value to critical reflect on the use of vlogs in two seemingly radically different groups: ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital newcomers’.

Analyzing such seemingly diverse cases made it possible to compare the findings and provide deeper insights into the use of vlogs in research. The first project concerned adolescents from a disadvantaged neighbourhood. Adolescents are considered to be ‘digital natives’; 86% of Dutch adolescents have a YouTube account and 71% of young people aged under 18 create YouTube movies (Nelis & van Stark, 2019). The second project focused on women with a non-Western background and with minimal digital skills. These women are considered to be ‘digital newcomers’. Although it seems unlikely that this latter group would create vlogs, because of their minimal digital 10 The pitch was co-created in a co-creation session which was part of the exploratory research of the digital divide in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; see Dedding et al. (2017) and Dedding et al. (2020). Policymakers, industrial designers, and professionals and volunteers working with citizens from disadvantaged neighbourhoods were invited to co-create solutions for the digital divide.

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Box 6.1: Promises of vlogs Facilitation of the engagement of citizens living in vulnerable circumstances: Creating vlogs is popular, fun, and entertaining No need for high literacy level to participate Facilitation of (shared) learning among citizens involved, peers, policymakers, and researchers: Co-creating vlogs reinforces individual learning about substantial matters Co-creating vlogs reinforces shared learning among those involved Co-creating vlogs produces tangible outcomes that facilitate vicarious learning for a wider audience, including peers and policymakers Facilitation of dissemination to a wider audience: Vlogs are popular, appealing, and fun YouTube is a familiar media among citizens in vulnerable circumstances Vlogs are quick and easy to make and there is no need for professional (editing) skills

skills, YouTube is an important source of information for these women because the content of YouTube is less text-based and the medium is relatively easy to use (Goedhart et al., 2019). We study these cases in this paper with the aim of exploring the value of cocreating vlogs with citizens from disadvantaged neighbourhoods for PAR projects. We will reflect on the promises of vlogs for the following aspects: (1) facilitation of engagement, (2) promoting (shared) learning, and (3) reaching out to the wider community to support action beyond their immediate context (Box 6.1). First, we briefly describe the cases and their context.

Context of the cases Case 1: the co-creation of ‘Healthy Lifestyle vlogs’ with adolescents from disadvantaged neighbourhoods

The aim of this ‘Healthy Lifestyle vlog project’ was to gain insight into adolescents’ daily reality and perspectives on health and health promotion and, on the basis of these insights, to design health promotion that better fits their perspectives and needs. According to the findings of a previous PAR project (Lems et al., 2019, 2020), co-creating vlogs seemed an appropriate way to reach this aim. The underlying assumptions were that making vlogs is a popular, active, and fun way to (1) engage adolescents, (2) stimulate healthy living,

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(3) facilitate shared learning between adolescents, researchers, and policymakers, and (4) critically reflect on opportunities for future healthy lifestyle interventions. The Healthy Lifestyle vlog project, commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, was organized in cooperation with a local youth media organization (conducted between May and September 2017). Twelve adolescents, aged between 12 and 25 (15.8±3.4) with mainly a Surinamese or Antillean cultural background, took part. The group, guided by a media coach, was stimulated to create vlogs in order to learn what health promotion should look like according to adolescents and to motivate other adolescents to work towards adopting a healthier lifestyle. The adolescents were free to choose the form and topics of the vlogs. Eight vlogs for peers and one vlog for policymakers were created (Figure 6.1a). In the final session, participants showed the vlogs to the researcher (EL) and three peers (invited by the participants) and this was followed by a discussion about the vlogs and a reflection on the making process. Case 2: the co-creation of vlogs about digital skills with women from disadvantaged neighbourhoods

This project aimed to gain insight into how women could use vlogs to improve their digital skills. On the basis of previous findings (Dedding et al., 2017; Goedhart et al., 2019), the underlying assumptions were that (1) vlogs are a familiar medium, (2) vlogs reduce the effects of having limited language skills, and (3) vlogs can promote shared

Figure 6.1: Content of the vlogs

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