Breaking cultures of silence: Learnings from a participatory community-centred approach to leveraging and researching documentaries for social change | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 7, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2634-4726
  • E-ISSN: 2206-5857

Abstract

This article offers new learnings and recommended practices for documentary-centred grassroots engagement and social change research. These learnings were developed through a community engagement effort in 2020 that centred around a documentary film about racial violence and injustice, . Shaped by extended dialogues with industry experts, the filmmaker, local community organizations and more than 100 community participants, these learnings should be of interest to researchers, media makers, organizers, activists, and engagement specialists who wish to engage publics in critical social justice conversations that are not possible through traditional top-down, externally driven methods and engagement approaches alone. Organized around an urgent question – ‘How can participatory methods shift how media is employed and researched for social change purposes?’ – this article responds to a recent call for researchers to avoid ‘re-inventing the wheel’ and to align new work with existing knowledge produced in the field of communication for social change and the long-tradition of community engagement work in the field of documentary.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Independent Television Service (ITVS)
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/content/journals/10.1386/jacm_00102_1
2022-04-01
2024-03-29
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