Community Video or Participatory Video plays a great role as an alternative media and a tool of community communications. I have been pursuing researches on democratic and participatory potentiality of community video since 2013. While doing the researches, a question came to my mind and I uploaded the question in the www.researchgate.net on April 23, 2015. My question was "Can we differentiate between community video and
participatory video? Both the terms are used in community media. But, is there
any difference literally or these can be considered as synonyms of each other?"
Today I have received a mail from my friend Gareth Benest, Director of Programmes at InsightShare. For my readers, I would like to inform that InshightShare is a community development organisation based in Oxford, United Kingdom and works globally with 15 years experience
combining media technology, with participatory approaches and community
engagement for locally-led change (www.insightshare.org). In his mail, Gareth wrote his opinion on the differences between community video and participatory video in a comprehensive and very simple way. Today, I would like to quote from his mail on the differences of both the terms. Thanks Gareth for your opinion.
"For me, they are very different practices that need to be
clearly differentiated so we (as practitioners) can better understand what we
are undertaking, and why. It’s not often discussed but is certainly an
area of some confusion so I’m grateful to you for asking the question.
Here is a very quick and rough attempt at explaining the difference, as I see
it:
Community video = filmmaking by a community.
Participatory video = filmmaking by a community, as a means
to achieve positive social change.
In my interpretation, community video refers to processes
that engage a community/group in the production of video as an end in
itself. Many examples of community video I have encountered place a
strong emphasis on film making as an activity - a discipline - focusing on
narrative and aesthetic considerations.
By contrast, participatory video uses video as
a tool to achieve the desired social change outcomes of the
community involved. It sets out to harness video as a means to address
issues and circumstances that might benefit from being aired, shared or
documented for the future. Often participatory video is deployed as a
medium for establishing communication channels between groups that otherwise
may not be able to engage in direct dialogue i.e. between different communities
or with stakeholders. The aesthetics of any video produced are secondary
to its utility as a social change mechanism, not just in terms of its impact on
audiences but also on those participating as they undertake the reflective and
investigative process. Because of the emphasis of process over product
inherent in participatory video, it is possible to achieve the intended
outcomes of such a process without ever actually producing a video at all!
This is by no means meant as a criticism of community video,
just an attempt to articulate how different participatory video really is."
Cite this article as-
APA
Dutta, A. (2015, May 28). Is Community Video different from Participatory Video? Community Communications. https://www.comcomm.org/2015/05/is-community-video-different-from.html
MLA
Dutta, Ankuran. "Is Community Video different from Participatory Video?" Community Communications, 28 May 2015, www.comcomm.org/2015/05/is-community-video-different-from.html. Accessed .............
Cite this article as-
APA
Dutta, A. (2015, May 28). Is Community Video different from Participatory Video? Community Communications. https://www.comcomm.org/2015/05/is-community-video-different-from.html
MLA
Dutta, Ankuran. "Is Community Video different from Participatory Video?" Community Communications, 28 May 2015, www.comcomm.org/2015/05/is-community-video-different-from.html. Accessed .............