Exploring ethical frontiers of visual methods

Abstract

Visual research is a fast-growing interdisciplinary field. The flexibility and diversity of visual research methods are seen as strengths by their adherents, yet adoption of such approaches often requires researchers to negotiate complex ethical terrain. The digital technological explosion has also provided visual researchers with access to an increasingly diverse array of visual methodologies and tools that, far from being ethically neutral, require careful deliberation and planning for use. To explore these issues, the Symposium on Exploring Ethical Frontiers of Visual Methods was held at the University of Melbourne, Australia, on 4 March 2014. The symposium was hosted by the Visual Research Collaboratory, a consortium of Australian and Canadian visual researchers, with support from Melbourne Social Equity Institute, University of Melbourne. The symposium represented the culmination of a process to develop a resource outlining principles of ethical practice for visual researchers and ethics committee members, the Guidelines for Ethical Visual Research Methods, which were launched at the event. The Guidelines present a framework for considering ethical matters in visual research, distinguishing six groups of issues united by an overarching theme: confidentiality; minimizing harm; consent; fuzzy boundaries; authorship and ownership; and representation and audiences.

Visual research is a fast-growing interdisciplinary field that spans the social sciences, the arts and design, and to a certain extent the humanities. Broadly speaking, visual research takes as its object of study the interpretation of visual phenomena in human societies and the many ways that human subjects negotiate individual and shared meanings from visual experience and representation. In its focus on the representational, creative and socio-cultural dimensions of the visual, visual research is distinct from vision research in the natural sciences which, contrastingly, involves psychological or neuroscientific research into the physiology of the eye and the mechanisms of visual processing in the brain. First identified in the 1990s, as the paradigmatic successor to the ‘linguistic turn’ of the 1970s and 1980s (Mitchell, 1994: 11–16), the turn to the visual has since recognized few disciplinary boundaries. Approaches to visual research vary widely and include researchers from established and newer social scientific communities, such as sociology, ethnography, cultural studies and urban studies, while they are also increasingly employed by community workers, facilitators, evaluators and artists. The flexibility and diversity of visual research methodologies are seen as strengths by their adherents, yet adoption of such methodologies often requires researchers to negotiate complex ethical terrain (De Laat, 2004). Among the various types of visual research, participatory research involving cameras and participant-generated images is probably most prominent and tends to raise the most common ethical questions or objections. The ubiquity of digital visual technologies in modern life, and especially the presence of camera-equipped networked digital devices, such as smartphones, has created – or exacerbated – a range of social and ethical issues that visual researchers are keen to explore, in domains such as identity, social interaction and privacy. The digital technological explosion has provided researchers with access to an increasingly diverse array of visual methodologies and tools that, far from being ethically neutral, require careful deliberation and planning for use (Pink, 2011). Many of these complex questions remain pertinent in relation to images generated via more ‘old school’ equipment as well, such as disposable cameras with film, and non-networked digital still and video cameras.

To explore these issues, the Symposium on Exploring Ethical Frontiers of Visual Methods was held at the University of Melbourne, Australia, on 4 March 2014. The symposium was hosted by the Visual Research Collaboratory, a consortium of Australian and Canadian visual researchers, ¹ with support from Melbourne Social Equity Institute, University of Melbourne. ² Keynote speakers, Professor Sarah Pink (RMIT University, Melbourne) and Associate Professor Susan Cox (University of British Columbia, Canada), addressed the future-oriented implications of visual research and the need for researchers and research ethics committee members to go beyond an adversarial approach to research ethics. These keynotes were interspersed with research presentations and panel discussions addressing questions of research ethics in diverse visual research contexts; videos of presentations are available to view on the Visual Research Collaboratory website. ³ Symposium participants comprised visual researchers, artists and ethics committee members from Australia and Canada.

The symposium represented the culmination of a process to develop a set of guidelines for ethical practice and review for visual researchers and ethics committee members, the Guidelines for Ethical Visual Research Methods. The Guidelines were formally launched at the event, and are available to download from the Visual Research Collaboratory website (Cox et al., 2014). Discussant Associate Professor Lynn Gillam (chair of the University of Melbourne’s Central Human Research Ethics Committee) highlighted the value of the guidelines for both researchers and ethics committees.

The Guidelines represent a key outcome of the research project, ‘Enabling socially-inclusive and ethical visual methodologies’. The inclusive, participatory intent of much visual research holds significant potential to involve hard-to-reach or marginalized communities in research, increasing the validity and social warrant of research findings by broadening the demographic base of research participation. Symposium participants Alice Wilkin (La Trobe University) and Gloria Purveen (University of British Columbia, presenting via Skype) discussed how methods such as photovoice and digital storytelling have been used to engage and represent the experiences of Aboriginal health workers and people living with dementia (Purveen et al., 2014; Wilkin, 2014). The participatory goals of much visual research are in harmony with the overall motivation for the kinds of patient-centric initiatives flagged in the June 2013 issue of Research Ethics, although visual research is commonly conducted in naturalistic rather than experimental settings. At the same time, and as Wilkin’s and Purveen et al.’s presentations highlighted, visual research often raises important ethical issues that may be challenging for both researchers and research ethics committee members to recognize and address, irrespective of their level of familiarity with visual methods.

The Guidelines present a framework for considering ethical issues in visual research, distinguishing six key groups of issues united by overarching themes: confidentiality; minimizing harm; consent; fuzzy boundaries; authorship and ownership; and representation and audiences. In practice, of course, these conceptualizations are not mutually exclusive, but blend together like coloured pigments in a solution. The particular instantiation of these issues in the context of visual research may be new to readers of this journal, even if the issues themselves are not. The category of ‘fuzzy boundaries’ may deserve further comment, however, as it is not a term in common use. A concept originally articulated by Gubrium et al. (2013), ‘fuzzy boundaries’ relates to ‘the blurring of roles and purposes’ that can occur when research is being conducted for multiple purposes and when the roles between researchers and participants are not clearly defined (Cox et al., 2014: 15). In Wilkin’s case, her role as researcher was made more complex by her (pre-existing) role within the Aboriginal community as a health worker and advocate; specifically, she was not able to operate as a disengaged or neutral observer. In Purveen et al. (2014)’s case, the research process (which involved capturing extensive video footage of an elderly woman with advanced dementia) led to the development of strong feelings of responsibility towards the research participant, which impacted the researchers’ view of the purposes and outcomes of the research project.

While acknowledging the ethical and affective dimensions of research, visual researchers are not deliberately seeking to court controversy. Nevertheless it is a potential issue for visual researchers that the innovative and pioneering nature of much visual research will result in such approaches being perceived as unconventional or transgressive with potential to challenge accepted institutional approaches to ethical review of research. Indeed, the proliferation of codes, guidelines and handbooks around visual research methods (e.g. British Sociological Association, 2006; Thomson, 2008; Wiles et al., 2008) could suggest that visual research is (or has been) perceived as risk-laden, unruly and/or subversive, and as standing in need of institutional discipline and regulation. Notwithstanding existing traditions of ‘edgework’, particularly in sociology and ethnography (Lyng, 1990, 2004; Vail, 2001), and the possibility that some researchers may desire their work to be perceived or publicized as ‘risky’, there are certainly perils in engaging with work that may be viewed ambivalently or even negatively, including potential disengagement of stakeholders and reduced dissemination of findings. It is incumbent on visual researchers to advocate the powerful benefits of visual research, including its potential to open up new ways of understanding social life and thus to enhance the political impact of research. In this context, the sharing of stories about visual research practice and the issues that arise, from the standpoint of both researchers and research participants, holds special value. The symposium participants identified a need for further opportunities for this type of exchange.

Noting the metaphor of the frontier in the symposium’s title, our aim has been to advocate that the notion of ‘ethical frontiers’ for visual research should be seen to point to positive forms of innovation and exploration that can enable research to be conducted in more ethical ways. All participants in the symposium submitted written evaluation forms on completion of the event, excluding speakers and organizers, with a total of 17 evaluations received. In the qualitative comments received on evaluation forms, several symposium participants commented positively on the high quality of presentations and the richness of the discussion. They appeared to value the guidance and generative questions outlined in the ethics guidelines resource, and welcomed the document’s overarching messages about the potential to enrich rather than destabilize ethical rigour and quality in research. Symposium participants who are members of the University of Melbourne’s ethics committees subsequently invited members of the team to present their work at a university-wide workshop involving staff on ethics committees across the university.