The case for and Against Doing Virtual Photovoice

Abstract

Photovoice offers creative participatory action methods for conveying community strengths and challenges with the goal of addressing health inequities. Accelerated by COVID-19 restrictions, photovoice has increasingly become virtual, and this shift has given rise to new considerations including navigating online recruitment and data collection, e-participatory action trends and working with multi-site large qualitative data sets. Within these contexts, the current article discusses the case for and against virtual photovoice, drawing from a large study comprising 110 men’s experiences of, and perspectives about, equitable and sustainable intimate partner relationships. The findings are shared across three themes. The first theme, e-Efficiencies and concessions contrasts increased recruitment reach and data collection cost-savings with vulnerabilities to phishing and challenges for working with participants’ wide-ranging internet literacies and practices. Theme two, Participatory action changed, chronicles the participants’ varied relationships to photography including sourcing third-party and archived photographs. Revealed also were privacy concerns whereby some participants opted for audio only interviews and/or restricted the use of their photographs. The third theme, Reckoning breadth and depth in a large dataset, discusses emergent study design considerations including analytics for interpreting and contextually representing large multi-site projects that are made possible through virtual photovoice. While technological advances and COVID-19 have forged photovoice virtually, the case for and against this trend reveals complex considerations that will likely manifest a continuum of approaches ranging virtual, hybrid and in-person models. In summary, we suggest that integral to weighing the case for and against virtual photovoice researchers will need to thoughtfully adapt to changing technologies, as well as potential post COVID-19 tilts for returning to in-person.