Abstract
Despite the methodological spread of virtual photovoice, alignments to and potential advances for the participatory action research (PAR) and knowledge dissemination (KD) components of in-person photovoice are poorly understood. Detailing the PAR and KD processes, practices, and products drawn from a virtual photovoice study examining men’s experiences of and perspectives about equitable intimate partner relationships, the current article offers three thematic findings. The first theme Processes and pragmatics for selecting representative photographs describes adapting established analytics of preview, review, and cross-photo comparisons to categorize and select images from a large collection of participant-produced photographs (n = 714). Specifically, detailed are the reconciling of researchers deciding which images and accompanying narratives to include guided by PAR principles. Theme 2, Democratizing and disrupting in-person PAR with virtual focus group polls (VFGPs), chronicles participant voting through Zoom to collectively decide and subsequently discuss their favorite photographs. While anonymity for the poll was democratizing in terms of participant equality for voting on the photographs, connecting men virtually from diverse locales could differentiate cultural norms. The third theme KD pledges and pitfalls with online photovoice exhibitions details the potential benefits and challenges for reaching diverse end-users. Evident was the importance of marketing and media for driving traffic to the online exhibition, and the centrality of interactivity for fostering engagement to build and adjust photovoice e-health interventions. With virtual photovoice continuing to grow in popularity post COVID-19, this article offers important methodological lessons for adapting and advancing components of in-person PAR and KD.
Keywords
Introduction
While virtual photovoice has continued to grow in popularity post COVID-19, methodological insights and guidance drawn from that work have focused on e-recruitment and participant Zoom interviews (see Chen, 2023; Ferlatte et al., 2022; Oliffe, Gao, et al., 2023; Rania et al., 2021; Shaw et al., 2023; Spyreli et al., 2024; Tanhan & Strack, 2020). Conspicuously absent are insights for adapting and advancing the participatory action research (PAR) and knowledge dissemination (KD) components of in-person photovoice to virtual spaces (Call-Cummings & Hauber-Özer, 2021). Key considerations include participant involvement in selecting photographs and co-creating online exhibitions, and drawing end-user engagement to address the social health issues depicted in participants’ visuals and narratives (Wang & Burris, 1997). Indeed, critically important is understanding how in-person PAR and KD processes, practices, and products might be adapted to advance virtual photovoice. The current article discusses methodological considerations by sharing learnings from a virtual photovoice study exploring men’s experiences of and perspectives about equitable intimate partner relationships. Detailed are insights about working virtually with a large collection of participant-produced photographs, conducting virtual focus group polls (VFGPs) to decide which photographs to exhibit, and KD strategies for designing, promoting, and evaluating online photovoice exhibitions.
The Entwinements and Estrangements of In-Person and Virtual Photovoice
Wang and Burris (1997) pioneered photo-elicitation as a method for research participants to explore aspects of their lives and communities through visuals and narratives. Evident in, and emergent from, their early studies were progressive PAR processes for how visual qualitative work could be done and disseminated (Wang, 2024). Indeed, the name change from photo-elicitation to photovoice confirmed its emancipatory PAR canons, fore fronting participants’ experiential knowledge for choosing which photographs were representative and shared (Wang et al., 1998). For example, in Wang et al.'s (1998) early work with women in rural China, participants worked in groups to discuss and select the photographs to be used to document their lived experiences and lobby policymakers to address the health inequities underpinning their challenges. These in-person PAR processes were decidedly hands-on, with Wang (2006) ever-present to facilitate the liberating intent that distinguished and defined photovoice methodology. It is fair to say that this early work had an anthropological tilt, characterized by the researcher[s] being there to engage participants in the production and KD promotion of their photographs and stories (Wang & Burris, 1997).
COVID-19 undoubtedly prompted and hastened virtual photovoice research, and this work has drawn some important methodological reflections and considerations. Rania et al. (2021) and Ferlatte et al. (2022), for example, chronicled challenges for researchers to manage online group dynamics and build trust with photovoice participants. Chen (2023) and Oliffe, Gao, et al. (2023) discussed the pros and cons of relying on email and social media for participant recruitment, contrasting the worldwide reach with the administrative costs associated with deciphering bot responses. The usability of virtual platforms and e-communication efficiencies were also diverse, deeply dependent on participants’ e-literacies and internet connectivity (Ferlatte et al., 2022; Rania et al., 2021). Relatedly, while COVID-19 normed the use of virtual qualitative interviews, there were concessions in adapting to participant-decided interview environments amid time and travel cost-savings benefits (Oliffe et al., 2021). These methodological insights are critically important (Chen, 2023; Ferlatte et al., 2022; Oliffe, Gao, et al., 2023; Rania et al., 2021; Tanhan & Strack, 2020), and the current article builds on those findings to detail PAR and KD considerations with the goal of guiding future virtual photovoice work.
Situating the Current Virtual Photovoice Study
Connections between men’s mental illness and intimate partner relationship break-ups informed the current photovoice study (Oliffe, Kelly, et al., 2023). Distressed and disrupted relationships pose serious mental health challenges for men with evidence indicating separated and divorced males are especially at high risk for depressive episodes (Rotermann, 2007) and suicidality (Kõlves et al., 2011). The negative mental health impacts of relationship breakdown for men have been linked to their stoicism and the lack of emotional intimacy and support without a partner (Affleck et al., 2018; de Boise & Hearn, 2017; Patrick & Beckenbach, 2009). Responding to contemporary masculinities and shifting gendered practices in intimate partner relationships, the study aimed to understand men’s experiences of building equitable and sustainable partnerships from strength-based, asset-building perspective.
Individual Interviewee Demographics (n = 110).
The current article includes the PAR and KD processes used to work with participants to decide their photographs and narratives as a means to conveying representative and diverse images from the collection. This process (see Figure 1) began with the research team screening the 714 images (Figure 1, Box 1), wherein 39 (5.5%) web stock photographs submitted by 8 (7%) participants were removed. Of the 675 remaining photographs, 173 (24%) were redacted based on 23 (21%) participants not consenting to some or all of their photographs being shared outside the individual photovoice interview. The remaining 502 (70%) photographs from 79 (72%) participants were reviewed along with their narratives to narrow the collection to images and narratives (n = 319) that explicitly spoke to equitable relationships in the context of men’s intimate partner relationships. The other 183 photographs focused on sustainable relationships with an emphasis on maintaining partnerships and dealing with transitions. The 319 equitable relationship photographs and narratives were reread by the research team to inductively derive descriptive labels to code the images as follows: (1) communication (n = 55), (2) values (n = 89), (3) domestic work (n = 62), (4) finances (n = 21), and (5) intimacy (n = 92). The data in each of the five codes were reviewed separately by a team of five researchers, and 10–15 photographs and narratives per code were chosen as representative (n = 55). A VFGP was conducted with the research team to vote on these 55 photographs using a 5-point Likert scale (1 low endorsement through 5 highest endorsement), which provided an opportunity for the team to trial and troubleshoot the upcoming participant VFGPs. The researcher VFGP resulted in the team’s top 40 photographs and narratives (comprising communication, n = 7; values, n = 6; domestic work, n = 11; finances, n = 5; and intimacy, n = 11). Subsequently, the 110 individual interviewees were invited via email to take part in a VFGP to vote and decide their top 30 photographs, a collection to be featured in an online photovoice exhibition. Selection of participant-submitted photographs for VFGPs and online photovoice exhibition.
VFGPs—Participant Demographics (n = 53).
The VFGPs were facilitated by an independent consultant (female) using the shared screen option in Zoom to show each of the researchers' top 40 photographs and reading the displayed corresponding narrative ahead of inviting participants to vote (see Figure 1, Box 2). Indicating their backing for each of the photographs, the group’s top three voted images were revealed in ascending order, inviting participants’ verbal and chat discussions. The focus group discussions were audio-visually recorded, transcribed verbatim, and the chat content harvested. These data, along with the researchers’ fieldnotes were content analyzed for the current article. The aggregate votes from the six participant VFGPs were used to decide their top 30 photographs. Focus group participants received a $50 CAD (equivalent) e-gift card to acknowledge their time and ongoing contributions to the study. In addition to the participant-voted top 30 photographs submitted by 23 (29%) of the 79 eligible participants, an additional 90 images pertaining to sustainable (n = 65) and equitable relationships (n = 25) submitted by 59 (75%) of the 79 eligible participants were selected by the research team to build thematic galleries based on the original five descriptive code labels (see Figure 1, Box 3). In these processes, the Finances category was adjusted to Activities to more accurately represent the photographs. The final collection of 120 participant-produced photographs was allocated to five thematic galleries labelled: (1) communication (n = 19), (2) values (n = 28), (3) domestic work (n = 18), (4) activities (n = 32), and (5) intimacy (n = 23).
Participant Feedback—Demographics (n = 22).
Incorporating participant feedback, the exhibition was adjusted and launched publicly along with media releases detailing findings from the first published empirical article (Oliffe, Kelly, et al., 2023) and a corresponding interactive gallery and quiz. Specifically, a 20-question quiz inviting visitors to match photographs and captions with three types of masculinities was central to the press release, and lobbied readers to visit the project website. Visitor usage patterns were collected via Google Analytics.
The findings shared in the current article were developed by reviewing data including the researchers’ fieldnotes about the PAR and KD processes, practices, and products along with VFGP transcripts, chats, and survey responses. Combining independent analyses of the data and extensive discussions among the research team along with multiple drafts of the current article, three thematic findings were developed: (1) Processes and pragmatics for selecting representative photographs, (2) Democratizing and disrupting in-person PAR in VFGPs, and (3) KD pledges and pitfalls with online photovoice exhibitions. Some illustrative data (i.e., photographs, narratives, and focus group participant quotes) are provided to contextualize salient points within each of the thematic findings.
Findings
Processes and Pragmatics for Selecting Representative Photographs
Ideally, all participants should have some input selecting the photographs and narratives to convey the group’s consensus points, as well as deciding images to illuminate the context-specific experiences of individuals (Clements, 2012). However, it was not logistically feasible to virtually poll all study participants for each of the 502 eligible photographs or facilitate participant–researcher discussions to collectively prepare and manage the entire collection. In addition, we noted early on in the photovoice interviews that participants often diversely defined and claimed their intimate partner relationship as equitable (see Oliffe, Kelly, et al., 2023). Given these challenges, we combined Oliffe et al.’s (2008) first two steps (preview and review) for analyzing participant photographs as a means to sort the large collection of images. In step 1, Preview, each of the 502 photographs was reviewed by the researchers with the goal of directly linking the participant’s corresponding narrative. However, this process was complex, in large part, because of the centrality and extended viewing and talk time for each photograph (via the shared screen option used in the Zoom interviews) which consistently drew diverse, layered, and sometimes contradictory storylines from participants. For example, Arthur, a 39-year-old father from Scotland, in a 16-year relationship, spoke at length (>21 min) about Photograph 1, which he titled
Photograph 1. Tensions. 1. There is always a tension … in my own life, in my ability to relax alongside the commitments that I have. I have the job at the shop, I have my teaching job, I have my studying, I have my family responsibilities, and I actually do try to get a little bit of time to relax as well. 2. It is representative of the way that I’m not really able to get much time to myself in my life, which obviously has an impact on the relationship but its also reflective of our relationship and the choices that we’ve made together in order to try and better our lives. 3. I am thinking I would like to have another [beer], but [my partner] wouldn’t like me to. I don’t want to cause that argument. Other times I go well “fuck it,” it’s the only time off I’m getting … this balancing of do you always do what you think your partner wants or sometimes it is okay to actually do what you want. 4. This may be the male thing, but I don’t really mind being a punching bag … it’s like fine, if somebody is going to be upset, I’d rather it was me than you. That’s why it is better to just take responsibility for the problem and apologize and be like right, great, done, we can move on … there is so much emphasis on basically, happy wife, happy life.
Weaving these different narratives across Photograph 1, Arthur strung causes, controls, and consequences to explain his image. These wide-ranging accounts troubled the espoused straight-forwardness of the preview stage (see Oliffe et al., 2008) for assigning a single narrative to participants’ photographs. With this in mind, we integrated step 2—Review, drawing the researchers’ overall interpretations of the participant interview, and focused on the project's primary research question to decide the narrative to accompany the photograph. We selected the third quote for Photograph 1 as representative of Arthur’s broader interview, and the perspective he most consistently expressed about [in]equity in his intimate partner relationship. While combining the preview and review steps to link the photographs and narratives, these researcher-driven processes pragmatically bypassed idealized in-person PAR practices for participants’ direct involvement in order to expedite preparing the data for step 3, Cross-photo comparison.
Step 3, Cross-photo comparison, was employed to view the 502 images, decide the 319 equity-focused photographs, and subsequently code, select, and vote on 55 to finalize the researchers’ top 40 photographs, a representative collection that would feature in the participant VFGPs. In the cross-photo comparison step, the research team purposefully worked to derive and convey patterns while including context-specific variations on the themes to reflect the heterogeneity of the sample. For example, from the domestic work code, Photograph 2, titled
Photograph 2. Fetching Water. Fetch(ing) water in the community places has become mainly a female role … there are a lot of situations where the pipe is not flowing and they don’t get to fetch the water. It brings a lot of violence in a relationship. Water, especially in developing countries, it’s a key thing … if men are also going to fetch water, then they will be able to know the reality of what it takes, what the other partner goes through to fetch the water.
Lamonte’s critique provided a pivot to lobby change toward gender equity in men’s intimate partner relationships. These deficit depictions (inequities) were consistently submitted by participants, advocating for gender equity through highlighting its absence. So, while the issue of fetching water might be culturally specific, the embedded tensions around domestic work and gendered divisions of labor reflected the theme and wider collection of photographs. Such diversity and inclusion for the 40 researcher-selected photographs was intentional, and aided by the team’s wide-ranging genders, ancestries, cultures, ages, and identities, along with many group discussions about the ways in which the images and narratives were being appraised.
In sum, though the scaling up of participation with a worldwide sample and large collection of photographs was made possible through virtual photovoice, working with that data to select representative images and captions for participant VFGPs demanded some adjusted processes and pragmatics for PAR. While adapting Oliffe et al.’s (2008) analytics for coding and selecting the visual data could not replicate in-person PAR practices, the adapted processes for working virtually reflexively incorporated inclusion and diversity to the researchers’ selection of the photographs and narratives for the participant VFGPs.
Democratizing and Disrupting In-Person PAR With VFGPs
While it was not feasible to work with an international sample of 110 participants to view all the eligible photographs, decide their narratives, and jointly select representative images, evident were democratizing and disrupting in-person PAR with the VFGPs. Specifically, the VFGPs were custom-designed for participants to independently vote on the 40 researcher-selected photographs to collectively decide their top 30 images. Intentionally action-oriented to facilitate engagement, the anonymity of the virtual vote (contrasting in-person community gatherings with inherent potentials for individuals to dominate and/or influence group discussion and decisions) can be argued as democratizing, in that it provided equal opportunities for participants to back their favorite images and narratives. That the 53 VFGP participants successfully cast 2088 of 2120 potential votes (98.5% completion) indicated good usability of the Zoom polling feature. Evident also was “participatory analysis” (Wang & Burris, 1997, p. 380), whereby participants offered varied perspectives about their top three VFGP photographs and narratives. The richness of these PAR processes was shared by Theo, a 36-year-old Canadian man who had recently separated after a 10-year marriage: “I enjoyed the opportunity to analyze the photos and captions, the process was thought-provoking and fluid.” For Theo, and many men, their experiences and perspectives were built on by thoughtfully considering an array of other participants’ reflections, photographs, and narratives about gender equity. The voting criteria was deliberately left open to encourage participants to determine their own specificities for appraising the photographs and narratives, and this was reflected in the post-poll discussions about their top three voted images. For example, Photograph 3, titled
Photograph 3. Leading and Being Led. There is leading and being led, but you have to give intention and the follower should accept it. And she could lead, or he could lead also … instead of just one person starting and the other one is doing … but it’s both deciding, both accepting, negotiating, and changing the way we do it.
Voted 5th overall in the VFGPs, participants discussed diverse factors that influenced their vote for Photograph 3. Eric, a 25-year-old Chinese man in a 4-year relationship, commented, “dancing is similar to a relationship as we enjoy the process of guidance and leading at the same time. We should appreciate the journey we shared together.” Whereas, Logan, a 42-year-old Canadian man in a 10-year relationship, spoke about having looked beyond the couple dancing in the foreground to explain, “I found it really interesting that it’s a bunch of pottery in the background, which in itself has a fragile component to it.” These participant interpretations provided shadow data offering a range of views. It is fair to say that the VFGPs afforded PAR democracies wherein the men independently triaged discovery, creativity, and resonance to decide and discuss their vote(s). When facilitated in person, these PAR processes can be more ruly, researcher-driven by design, or the result of participants' lobby for clarity to meet the expected outcomes of focus group interviews. By contrast, the VFGPs were decidedly freestyle with the straight-forward task of collectively deciding and ranking their top 30 photographs.
Contrasting the tradition of in-person locale-specific group discussions, virtual photovoice also offered opportunities for connecting men of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds who resided in seven different countries (i.e., the six VFGPs all included participants from at least three different countries). Berat, a 38-year-old Turkish man in a 15-year relationship, explained: It was actually so strange and also nice to see the pictures that I can relate to. Most of them were similar with what I took. And it’s so strange that people get the same idea, maybe. It’s something we think is unique, but it’s maybe more common all around the world.
Referring to gender equity considerations, Berat took solace (and some surprise) in feeling connected to other men in how he thought about his partnership. Referencing a participant’s narrative about the challenge of “being more open and talking about … feelings,” Yash, a 25-year-old South Asian man living in Canada who recently ended a 2-year relationship, affirmed, “that (sentence) just felt very honest to me. And I think as men … it’s expected to just keep your feelings inside and not express them.” In these examples, Berat and Yash spoke to masculine norms, and evident were PAR avenues for participants to undo some of those stereotypes (e.g., self-reliance, competitiveness, and stoicism). Having an independent consultant facilitate the VFGPs helped these processes, reducing the potential for researcher–participant power differentials by explicitly inviting confirmatory, alternative, or contradictory interpretations from participants (Evans-Agnew et al., 2022). This might also be understood as democratizing in that the researchers were separated from this virtual PAR component to afford impartial facilitation for participants deciding and openly discussing the photographs and narratives.
Among the most poignant examples of PAR exchange was Photograph 4, titled
Photograph 4. Reminder That You Are Loved. That reminder is always there and it’s something that … puts a smile on your face to see … regardless of what’s going on … the reminder that you are loved … is really nice.
Many men appreciated the simplicity and power of the photograph, as Cahill, a 22-year-old Turkish man in a 4-year relationship, explained: “sometimes men are starved of attention and love and appraisal and approval.” By contrast, Sam, a 26-year-old African man living in Canada with his partner of 5 years, clarified his lack of resonance: It doesn’t make a huge difference for me because I don’t come from an affirmation culture. So, I was rarely affirmed. My parents and everyone I grew up around rarely outright say they love you, but they did things that were much more indicative of love and much more important to me, like observing when I do a good job.
Sam’s view illustrated diversity in what might count as equity in men’s intimate partner relationships, bringing into focus the influence of cultural norms and structures (see Hergenrather et al., 2009) on individual agency to summon the group’s critical consciousness and inclusivity (Carlson et al., 2006). These PAR processes were aided by the fact that the virtual environment was neutral, which in and of itself reduced the potential for othering those whose experiences and partnerships may be deemed as residing outside dominant cultural norms.
In sum, the VFGPs leveraged participants’ decision-making and invited their experiential knowledge, bringing into focus PAR processes for democratizing and disrupting in-person practices. The VFGPs were emancipatory in facilitating collective learning across wide-ranging geographies and supporting inductive ways of understanding gender equity in the context of intimate partnerships.
KD Pledges and Pitfalls With Online Photovoice Exhibitions
The KD pledges and pitfalls with online photovoice exhibitions were evident in contrasting the potential for reaching geographically diverse end-users with the complexities for driving traffic to the website and engaging visitors with the photographs and narratives. Continuing PAR processes, men provided feedback about the online photovoice exhibition through a Zoom participant focus group or survey questionnaire. Within this context, we asked participants questions about usability and content to guide our KD efforts, in particular their recommendations for the selection and organization of the photographs, as well as how we might best engage other men with the online photovoice exhibition. Figure 2 features a screenshot of the 2D Intimacy sub-gallery, and that content consistently drew participant commentaries and conversations about prioritizing efforts for raising men’s knowledge and awareness. Intimacy gallery.
Specifically, focus group participants emphasized the importance of positioning men’s emotional intimacy as a strength rather than a vulnerability. Yash, a 25-year-old single South Asian man living in Canada, explained: I think it’s important to recognize that intimacy can go beyond just physical actions. What I really liked with all the photos is that some things focus more on spending quality time.
Sharing his view of the intimacy gallery, Yash underlined the value of drawing other men into the photographs and narratives by offering some interpretations rather than assuming end-users would independently engage in reflexivity and analyses of the content. Building on this, Austin, a 31-year-old American man in a 6-year relationship, suggested we target young men because “portrayed to them often is the need to show your prowess in physical ability, but that’s not intimacy, that’s something else entirely.” Here, communicating intimacy was suggested as important strength-based content to include. Emre, a 25-year-old single Turkish participant, recommended coaching men “to listen and try to understand what your partner might want from you, from an intimacy level.” Relatedly, Timothy, a 25-year-old single Canadian man, advised that “sometimes writing a letter can help, to either read out loud to your partner or let them read it. This can help you say things that are hard to say.” These PAR KD directions consistently recommended augmenting the thematic photo galleries with outcome-specific tailored content and cues to reflexively engage end-users. This might be understood as distinctly different from in-person photovoice exhibitions which tend to encourage (and perhaps assume) viewers’ freestyle constructivist interpretations of the content displayed. The online photovoice exhibitions were more structured to prompt constructivist learnings toward action for social and perhaps self-change among end-users. In essence, our focus was on prompting consciousness about the connections between men’s strength-based, asset-building gender relations and contemporary discourses about equitable intimate partnerships.
With the goal of appealing to diverse end-users, we included a 3D version of the photovoice exhibition (see Figure 3), along with options for viewers to submit comments and emojis to the photographs and narratives, and/or upload their own photographs. While the 3D exhibition provided a walk-through experience to mimic in-person experiences, David, a 30-year-old American man in a 1-year relationship, commented, “if you were too close to the wall, there wasn’t a way of backing up … if you self-navigated, it looked a little bit too close and you couldn’t see the higher pictures.” Affirming these usability issues, there was less traffic to the 3D gallery compared to the 2D version. We also received only 21 emoji reactions to photographs and no visitor photographs have been submitted in the 10 months since the public launch of the online photovoice exhibition. These KD shortfalls reflect the complexities (and some pitfalls) for drawing traffic and fully engaging visitors. 3D photovoice exhibition.
In terms of other efforts to leverage virtual KD pledges, we used social media including an established Twitter channel (>3100 followers) to promote the online photovoice exhibition. A press release detailing the first published empirical article from the research (Oliffe, Kelly, et al., 2023) was also picked up by media including radio, podcasts, and television, and this drew some traffic to the exhibition. However, it was the digital print media coverage, albeit through a wave of sensationalism misreporting the study methods and empirical findings with headlines including: “Scientists say all men fit into three categories – so which one are you” that got the most traffic to the online photovoice exhibition (see the Daily Mail UK’s story). Equally disappointing in terms of media misrepresentations, the New York Post’s story used a Getty Image of a man knitting to depict progressive (equity-based) masculinity and the men who aligned with that in their intimate partner relationships. Among >400 comments posted by readers to the New York Post platform in response to the story, progressive masculinity also drew the strongest criticisms: “all males that fit into progressive roles will find problems with women in the long run as women say they want a progressive male but in reality they want a traditional male.” The empirical worth of the research was also questioned: “science means nothing anymore. Activists have ruin [sic] all rational thinking,” as was the Canadian origin of the study: “you lost me at the study was from British Columbia. Nothing out of Canada really interests me.” The idiom, any publicity is good publicity, somewhat cushioned these slights as we saw >15,000 visitors from over 80 countries accessing the online photovoice exhibition in the 4 weeks that these stories ran. The press release also included a prompt (and link) for readers to complete a curated quiz comprising 20 questions, inviting visitors to choose from three types of masculinities in men’s intimate partner relationships (see Figure 4). Designed to address what Li et al. (2022) named as passivity and psychological distance in online exhibitions, the quiz received 27,279 responses in the first month, averaging 6819 per week. Along with the short-form content and ease for submitting multi-choice responses to the questions, the popularity of the quiz grew with the media pick-up. That said, while the quiz drew strong engagement, there was a 70% decline between responses to the first three (n = 2933 responses each) and the last three questions (n = 708 responses each). Similarly, while our intent for the quiz was that visitors would also explore the photovoice exhibition, only 15% made that transition, averaging 31 seconds with that content (Figure 4). Quiz.
In the social media age, as Subramanian (2018) has noted, both content and consumption are increasingly brief, and our KD pledges incurred some design and marketing pitfalls. In terms of positives, the online photovoice exhibition had wide geographical KD reach, with some promising avenues for facilitating men’s gender equity conversations in a global context. The shortfalls however underscore the complexities for building interactivity and mustering strength-based mass social marketing to attract traffic within a saturated virtual souk.
Discussion and Conclusion
The current article, by chronicling our virtual photovoice PAR and KD experiences, illuminates some tensions for reconciling the potentials for advancing in-person approaches. Realistically, virtual PAR practices and KD strategies seem destined to have to adapt to where research participants and knowledge end-users reside with recognition for their online participatory and consumption practices. But rather than abandoning in-person PAR and KD as too antiquated for the ever-brief engagements characterizing virtual milieus, we purposefully took and highly recommend ongoing efforts to adapt, and perhaps progress these important foundational practices of photovoice. In what follows, we briefly discuss the implications for each of the thematic findings.
Regarding Processes and pragmatics for selecting representative photographs, the complexities for selecting participant images in part reflect Wen’s (2015) observation that the contemporary use of digital photographs is also communicating with others (rather than just commemorating a fixed and/or shared memory). Further, the use of existing photographs (which many participants in the current study submitted) primed an array of temporal reflexivity for participants, as Chen (2023) has previously highlighted. This temporal introspection was especially powerful for men examining their partnership(s) across time, and with photographs traversing the past, present, and future. This had implications for selecting representative photographs, complicating Oliffe et al.’s (2008) preview and review steps for the researchers reconciling PAR with ultimately having to select a single narrative to accompany each photograph. Contrasting the ideals for participants being present to co-construct such interpretations, we could not facilitate that level of interactivity virtually, an experience previously noted by Reisner et al. (2018). Lastly, virtual environments are increasingly characterized by their brevity wherein engaging end-users with depth and discussion akin to in-person photovoice is naïve (Call-Cummings et al., 2019). The pragmatic default position recommended here is for researchers to take on participatory action processes for deciding which, and how many, photographs participants can reasonably vote on. Notwithstanding the risks for reinforcing researcher and participant power differentials, as argued by Call-Cummings and Hauber-Özer (2021), we suggest researchers be reflexive in promoting critical consciousness, agency, and social transformation in their interpretations, selection, and sharing of the photographs and narratives.
Regarding Democratizing and disrupting in-person PAR with VFGPs, the shift to culturally diverse participants brought benefits, including cross-country affirmations as well as diverse perspectives about equity in intimate partner relationships. This plurality of viewpoints enriches the research and challenges dominant Western/Global North epistemologies. While Wang and Burris’ (1997) original goals for photovoice included community involvement, dialogue, and outreach to policymakers, virtual photovoice can extend that locale-specific reach to mix cultures and speak to global patterns and variations. Furthermore, the PAR facilitated through VFGPs included rich dialogue, inclusive of men who were more comfortable contributing through the Zoom chat. Nonetheless, Rania et al.’s (2021) caution about a virtual “climate of tensions” that can flow from unseen non-verbal and body language is well-taken. Indeed, shorted were virtual observational opportunities, and the collection and analyses of data defining the early in-person PAR tenets (Wang, 2006). Contrasting this loss, in line with Almujlli et al.'s. (2022) suggestion, the VFGPs were time-saving and cost-efficient, as well as interactive, dynamic, and efficient in terms of expedited PAR. Also, adding to Binnquist et al.’s (2022) assertion about the positive use of online video-chat platforms to promote cross-ideological communication, the VFGPs facilitated rich dialogue to chronicle challenges as well as benefits for men working toward equity in their intimate partner relationships.
The KD pledges and pitfalls affirm virtual communities of practice (Dubé et al., 2006) as increasingly demanding tailored design and strategic marketing along with ongoing evaluations to inform adjustments. While the KD pledges for reach with an online photovoice exhibition were evident, it is fair to say that replication (i.e., 2D and 3D galleries) and the themed photographs and narratives did not fully entice or engage visitors to the site. The potential for KD to be an intervention in and of itself was simultaneously evident, with the utopia of fostering visitor interpretations and reflexivity (rather than instructing prescribed strategies) a worthy endgame toward gender transformative practices. Such potential for online photovoice exhibitions to be social interventions grounded in communities of practices (Creighton & Oliffe, 2010) and championed by lived experiences and expertise was ever-present (though somewhat elusive) in our first pass for designing this resource. As Johnson and Guzman (2013) suggest, online photovoice exhibitions are not fixed representations of a research project; rather, they offer opportunities for new interpretations and inspire actions through applied teaching and research endeavors. With this in mind, we are developing more targeted interactivity-based interventions to more fully engage visitors, though, pragmatically, the finite and time-sensitive project funding for this (and most photovoice studies) limits the feasibility for ongoing evaluations, nimble content adjustments, and high-volume/impact social marketing. Implicated here is the potential integration of commercial determinants of health (Maani et al., 2023) whereby there are likely strategic avenues for lobbying industry investments to scale and sustain strength-based virtual photovoice interventions.
Study limitations include the focus on gender equity, a topic that likely attracted some men with specific related interests—a self-selecting sampling bias that also has implications for the transferability of methodological insights shared here. Specifically, linkages between men’s intimate partner relationships, domestic violence, and intimate partner violence in a post Me Too era likely effect PAR and KD efforts for conveying, and receptivity to men’s strength-based asset-building insights. With this in mind, the methodological findings shared here might benefit from future topic-diverse virtual photovoice work to test and/or advance the current study findings.
In conclusion, PAR and KD are vitally important, ongoing considerations for virtual photovoice research moving forward. Reflecting on information technology changes in the last decade, and the accompanying challenges and benefits for photovoice, it seems completely reasonable to expect ongoing adjustments in ever-changing virtual worlds. Preserving some in-person traditions while advancing the PAR and KD tenets of virtual photovoice is undoubtedly possible, but also imperative for aligning photovoice methods more broadly with the global calls for equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Footnotes
Author Contributions
Study conceptualization and design: J.L.O.; data collection and analysis: J.L.O., N.G., M.S., and C.C.F.; and draft manuscript preparation: J.L.O., N.G., M.S., C.C.F., C.Y.L.Y., S.M., and P.S. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was made possible with funding from New Frontiers in Research Fund (Grant # F21-04676). John L. Oliffe is supported by a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Men’s Health Promotion. Office space is provided to John L. Oliffe by the Wyatt Trust, Adelaide, South Australia. Calvin C. Fernandez is supported by PhD funding via John L. Oliffe’s CRC stipend.
Ethical Statement
Informed Consent
All participants provided informed written consent to participate in the Zoom focus group polls and/or for their photographs to be used in the online photo exhibition and academic publications. This consent was provided via Qualtrics survey tool that complies with the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).
