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Sociological Research Online: https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780419878714.

The Ethics of Technology choice: Photovoice methodology with men living in

low-income contexts

Dr Anna Tarrant (University of Lincoln) and Dr Kahryn Hughes (University of

Leeds)

Abstract

This article describes a two-phased reflexive ethical process initiated when choosing

digital cameras for the photovoice method in research with men living in low income

contexts. While this participatory method aims to flatten power asymmetries in

researcher-researched relationships, debate is needed about how pragmatic technology

choices may inadvertently underscore or even reinforce participants’ situated

experiences of disempowerment and constraint. Critically engaging with an ethics of

care approach to decision-making, we unpick what superficially appears to be a

straightforward problem of method, and demonstrate how pragmatic decisions may

confound researchers’ efforts towards democratisation in research. We reflect on how

such efforts may inadvertently obscure contextual processes shaping the potential for

participants to engage in research. Our reflections demonstrate the need to take

seriously all decision-making throughout the research process as integral to a wider

politics of method and ethics.

Keywords

camera technology, ethics, inequalities, marginalised populations, men, photovoice,

reflexivity

Introduction

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This article discusses a range of unexpected ethical concerns raised when deciding on

appropriate technology for photovoice methodology in a qualitative longitudinal (QL)

research study called Men, Poverty and Lifetimes of Care (hereafter, MPLC). MPLC

examined men’s care responsibilities and experiences of living on a low income in a

northern city in England (Tarrant, 2016, 2018). The photovoice methodology

involved two phases of ethical reflexivity that we characterise as proactive and

reactive after Neale (2013). Proactive ethics are those built into study design from the

outset reflecting anticipated ethical concerns, and reactive ethics are those developed

in response to emerging ethical challenges in the field (Neale, 2013). The first,

proactive, phase in MPLC began with the ostensibly simple question of whether to

use disposable or digital cameras. This pragmatic technology choice provoked a range

of unexpected ethical considerations associated with giving people in low-income

contexts technology that would make them financially liable and accountable (Allen,

2012). In the second, reactive, phase of ethical reflexivity, we considered how far

these original concerns mapped onto and captured the range of ethical challenges that

arose during the fieldwork. Our analyses identified significant dissonance between the

anticipated ethical challenges and what actually happened in the research. In

particular, we observed participants responding in surprising ways to the photovoice

strand of the study, especially around how they managed their research participation.

Photovoice is a participatory method that is intended to empower disadvantaged

participants (Houle et al., 2018; Simpson and Richards, 2018) and flatten

asymmetrical power relations in the researcher–researched relationship. This ethic of

empowerment underpinned all epistemological development in MPLC. The study was

particularly concerned with how to render the marginalised visible and to consider

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what sort of visibilities are produced through the research process (Back, 2007;

Moore, 2012; Tarrant, 2016; Tarrant and Hughes, 2019). The questions involved in

the choice of photovoice methodology and technology therefore also included how

far, and in which ways, the men in MPLC were able to use photovoice to inform on

themselves. These questions were especially important as men in these localities are

marginalised, and often vilified, through policy focus and orientation in terms of their

family roles and identities (see Neale and Davies, 2015; Tarrant and Hughes, 2019).

Decision-making for the photovoice strand thus involved additional ethical

sensitivities to participants’ often stigmatising and disempowering policy contexts

(Emmel and Hughes, 2010). These contexts formed both substantive and

methodological subjects of enquiry so that questions about who had been accessed for

the study, how and where participants were accessed, and what they said about

themselves (Emmel et al., 2007) were important.

From the outset of MPLC, critically reflexive conversations between the authors

highlighted how the ethical values at play theoretically framed the men in the study.

For example, the choice of technology raised uncomfortable concerns about whether

the financial value of digital cameras introduced risks to participants in low-income

contexts, or translated participants into a risk to the study. In this way, pragmatic

decision-making about technology choice demonstrated how ethical reflection became

integral to theoretical refinement in the study. Combined, both proactive and reactive

phases of ethical engagement facilitated insight into how critical analysis of situated

ethical decision-making enhances in-depth understandings of participants’ everyday

contexts.

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More broadly, this article situates our questions around technology choices within the

literature on the politics of photovoice. Using a small number of theoretically relevant

cases from the MPLC fieldwork, we unpick what superficially appears to be a

straightforward problem of method and demonstrate how different emphases in

ethical decision-making impacts researchers’ efforts towards democratisation in

research relationships (Creighton et al., 2018; Crow, 2012; Edwards and Brannelly,

2017). We use these fieldwork examples of how and in which ways the photovoice

method in MPLC did and did not work to explore how far such democratisation is

possible. In this context, we discuss how efforts towards democracy may

inadvertently serve to obscure participants’ lived experiences in particular policy

contexts, or even reinforce experiences of formal regulation. We conclude with

reflections on the need to take seriously the importance of all decision-making

throughout the research process as integral to a wider politics of method (Savage,

2010) and ethics.

Photovoice and the politics of method

The choice of photovoice in MPLC was informed by a burgeoning methodological

literature in visual sociology on the possibilities visual participatory methods have to

offer for social research (Barnes et al., 2017; Lomax, 2015; McIntyre, 2003).

Photovoice is used to portray visually the experiences of different human populations,

and has been used in a number of community settings (Allen, 2012). It allows

community members to identify, highlight, and document possible change within their

communities and become the authors of their experiences (Oliffe and Bottorff, 2007;

Walsh et al., 2010); challenge the established politics of representation by allowing

the ‘powerless’ to document their lives (Booth and Booth, 2003); encourage critical

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consciousness (Carlson et al., 2006); and help to bring about social change through

the power of imagery in policy making processes (Walsh et al., 2010; Wang and

Burris, 1997). More recently, it has been used with men to gain important insights

into sensitive areas of their lives, including their mental health (Creighton et al., 2018;

Oliffe and Bottorff, 2007) and health and wellbeing practices (Simpson and Richards,

2018).

Creighton et al. (2018) argue that despite variations in approach to the method, a

consistent goal of photovoice is the ostensible democratisation of the research process

in order to drive social change (see Creighton et al., 2018; Crow, 2012; Edwards and

Brannelly, 2017). The aim of ‘flattening out’ power relations between researcher and

researched by using photovoice is a central characteristic of the micro dynamics of the

democratisation process (Creighton et al., 2018). Centrally, the notion is that

participants are empowered to storify their own lives and speak directly to policy

processes (Liebenberg, 2018).

The focus of current debate prioritises what happens to participant-generated images

once they leave the protected contexts of research. Such images may play an

unintended role in perpetuating negative and stigmatising narratives of people and

places, linked to a wider politics of representation. Images may become emblematic

of particular ideologies at odds with the moral frameworks in which researchers might

be working. Contemporary examples in the mass media include the upsurge of

documentary making in the UK, described as ‘poverty porn’ (Allen et al., 2015;

Jensen, 2014). These programmes embed ‘commonsense’ ideas about welfare and

worklessness in their visual depiction and focus on particular people (Jensen, 2014).

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Sexualised images of young girls, who may be teenage mums for example, come to

emblematise behaviours that accrue to certain places. These images consequently

represent behaviour rather than condition. Through these representations,

responsibility for poverty and for the stigmatisation of locality belongs to the people

who live there. Poverty is thus de-contextualised and individualised, and urban areas

and neighbourhoods, through their links to a range of social problems, become

‘spatially tainted’ (Crossley, 2017). Images like these can also present a disparate

group as homogeneous and put a face on those responsible for stigma in ‘bad places’.

The potential hijacking of images produced in research via representational processes

may therefore conversely limit the potential for social change, the original intention of

researchers. Such concerns are illustrated by the findings of Fink and Lomax (2016)

who describe their anxieties around the dissemination of one particular participant-

generated image of girlhood taken during their study of marginalised urban young

people. In presentations disseminating their findings, the social dynamics of class,

gender, and age were evident in, and shaped how, audiences responded to the image

(Fink and Lomax, 2016). These reactions provoked their initial ethical reflection

around how and whether to disseminate the images their participants liked and chose

from their study. Their example shows that while visual data can effectively portray

the complexities of modern girlhood and give marginalised girls a voice, it also

renders them more visible, not only within a fixed moment but also in a context in

which ‘portrayals of working-class young people are saturated with stigmatizing

discourses of poverty, inadequacy, and irresponsibility’ (Fink and Lomax, 2016: 23).

In their work about men’s mental illness, Creighton et al. (2018) similarly highlight

the complexities of how their research fosters certain subject positions and even

(arguably) reifies particular research themes, for example, vulnerability, assigning to

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them unintended ontological purchase.

These debates have relevance for MPLC where the choice of photovoice was, in part,

to address policy and public discourses of feckless and absent fathers that typically

demonise men in low-income contexts (Tarrant and Hughes, 2019). Photovoice was

employed to reintroduce the subjectivities and lived experiences of these fathers, and

how they understood themselves to be. The generality of literature advises on ‘the

ethics of letting go’ (Fink and Lomax, 2016) of images by and of study participants.

As a departure, this article discusses how a focus on the ‘designing and doing’ of

research using photovoice allows us to consider how particular ethical orientations

may inadvertently obscure the interests of the participants it is seeking to empower.

Fink and Lomax’s (2016) work is increasingly important in an age of digital image

production and dissemination where images from disparate contexts may be brought

together to support particular, stigmatising, narratives of working class lives.

However, we have used their concerns to anticipate how ethical focus on certain

forms of participant harm may be privileged over others at different stages of the

research. It was this literature that supported the early proactive phase of our ethical

engagement in the choice of photovoice technology and method.

We now outline how and why photovoice was used in MPLC, and how the choice of

digital, as opposed to disposable cameras, involved us in developing a more

elaborated process of ethical enquiry and reflection than we had originally expected.

We demonstrate our ethical reasoning and analysis and clarify how this involved

attention to the wider range of activities and relationships constitutive of the design,

context, and conduct of MPLC. What began as a fairly simple question about camera

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choice became a complex two-phased ethical puzzle that exemplifies the situated,

constitutive, and emergent nature of ethics in social research (Edwards and Mauthner,

2012).

Phase 1, proactive ethics: using photovoice with marginalised men

The main aim of MPLC is to explore men’s experiences of living in low-income

localities and the longitudinal character of their care responsibilities, drawing

attention to the intersections of masculinities, poverty, and care (Tarrant, 2016;

Tarrant and Hughes, 2019). Given the focus of MPLC, it was important to recognise

that the participants were in socially and politically precarious positions (Emmel and

Hughes, 2010) and part of a representational context that typically constructs them as

‘objects of unwarranted disdain’ (Coltart and Henwood, 2012: 39). The marginality of

these men and the ‘sensitive’ nature of this research engendered critical consideration

of the realities of fieldwork and engagement in a process of ‘ethics in practice’

(Emmel and Hughes, 2010). Anna reflected on aspects of this in a research blog, in

which she considered how working through uncomfortable realities of the

asymmetrical power relations in fieldwork might also elucidate how broader

inequalities intersect and operate in the field:

My academic thinking is often prompted by very simple questions, from friends, family or colleagues. Last week, when I was talking about the fieldwork I have just started, involving going to men’s homes to interview them about their care responsibilities, my sister asked me: ‘is it safe for you to go to men’s houses on your own?’ . . . . . Implicitly, the question about my safety highlights the inherent inequalities between me and my male interviewees, but it also carries implicit assumptions that men are more likely to be violent or put me at greater risk. I haven’t been asked the same question when researching female participants. (Tarrant, 2015)

This early reflexivity helped to expose the various assumptions underpinning the

preliminary design of the fieldwork, highlighting disparities of power and status

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between researcher and researched; the implications of these for decision-making in

the field; and, in this case, the gendered antipathies characterising the broader context

of the research. The significant discomfort engendered by institutional requirements

to consider how men pose a risk to one’s physical safety as a lone female researcher

was used to explore how far, and in which ways, feminist research can deploy an ethic

of care in order to counterbalance such pejorative assumptions. An ethic of care

demands a different way of thinking through ethics processes in research. Drawing on

Selma Sevenhuijsen (1998), Edwards and Mauthner (2012: 25), for example, argue

that

. . . ethics is about how to deal with conflict, disagreement and ambivalence

rather than attempting to eliminate it. A feminist ethics of care can help

researchers think about how they do this by ‘illuminating more fully the

sources of moral dilemmas and formulating meaningful epistemological

strategies in order to deal with these dilemmas, even if only on a temporary

basis (Sevenhuijsen, 1998: 16).

Anna’s concerns around questions of risk were not only confined to personal anxieties

and conversations but were also reinforced by formalised university fieldwork risk

assessments. These are seemingly gender neutral but nonetheless map onto unevenly

gendered vulnerabilities associated with lone researcher working, where women are

perceived to be more at risk than men. Within research teams, risk assessments may

also manifest as expressions of collegial concern, and in MPLC through employing a

feminist ethic of care, such concerns became part of the two-phase joint reflexive

project between Anna, and the study mentor, Kahryn prompted by questions of

technology choice in photovoice.

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Ethical challenges raised by photovoice technology choices

Although Anna’s early attention had been focused on gendered inequalities in

researcher–researched relationships between women and men, the question of camera

technology required consideration of a different and equally contradictory ethical

terrain. It was at the point at which Anna sought to choose between disposable and

digital cameras that efforts to democratise the research process began to collide with a

different set of ethical principles and concerns that related directly to the contexts of

the participants. In particular, we were confronted with questions of how ethical

attention to certain aspects of risk and vulnerability associated with men living in low-

income contexts may reinforce or underscore the stigmatising discourses that MPLC

was seeking to unpick. The remainder of this section charts how the different ethical

principles associated with technology choice had the unintended consequence of

individualising people and institutions, and posing the interests of each as competing.

Very few studies report on researchers’ decision-making about the most appropriate

technology to use in photovoice, which meant we had to manage new and emerging

ethical debates as part of the process of the designing and doing of MPLC. However,

ostensibly simple technology choices have significant pragmatic and ethical

implications for research. Choosing between disposable and digital cameras, for

example, raises the tension between the pragmatic impacts on the quality of the data

produced, as compared with the requirements for participants to learn a new

technology and thus increase the ‘burden’ of participatory research (see also Spooner

et al., 2008), an important ethical consideration. This lack of discussion reflects the

broader omission in written publications at least, of debate on the practical issues and

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concerns that qualitative researchers may encounter early on, or throughout, the

research process (McCosker et al., 2001). In work on photovoice, there are some

exceptions, including Wang (2006) who briefly discusses the choices facilitators and

participants might make about camera use. The Photovoice Manual (2014) also

includes a section on the advantages and disadvantages of using digital cameras,

acknowledging that digital camera use may be culturally inappropriate and difficult to

master (see also Allen, 2012).

However, questions of camera technology are absent in ethical debates about

photovoice, which explains the lack of theoretical positions from which to make such

judgements (Prosser, 2000; Wiles et al., 2008). Yet the processes involved in

choosing the photovoice technology in MPLC raised three areas of ethical concern

that overlapped and articulated with each other, but were distinct. These related to the

concerns of the researchers, the institution and funder, and the participants. We deal

with these concerns in this order, as it reflects the two phases of ethical reflection.

First, in the proactive phase, we turned to the literature to formulate ethical questions

contingent on the choice of camera technology for the researchers. Second, as part of

the same phase, we considered the institutional and funder contexts through which

these questions were reviewed and decided upon. Finally, we engaged in the second

phase of reactive ethical reflection which involved comparison between our original

ethical concerns and those which arose during and after fieldwork.

Researcher-led ethical questions raised by camera technology choice

The question about camera technology arose during the first round of interviews in

MPLC, which marked the recruitment phase for photovoice. Anna conducted semi-

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structured biographical interviews with 26 participants living in low-income contexts

focused on care responsibilities over the lifecourse. The majority were men living on

their own. The sample also included a kinship care couple, and a young man and his

sister. Where possible, Anna also interviewed women who were significant others for

these men, who were present at the time of interview and willing to give consent. The

interviewees occupied a diverse range of father and/or father-like relationships: 7

were young fathers, 12 were mid-life fathers with varying circumstances, 6 were

kinship carers, and 1 was a grandfather.

Most were unemployed or in and out of the churn of un/employment that

characterises such localities (Shildrick et al., 2012) and had varying relationship

statuses. Across the sample, the participants predominantly occupied otherwise

unconventional gendered care arrangements, that is the majority were primary care

givers for young children. Employment status was more often than not, linked to this.

At the conclusion of these interviews, the participants were asked if they would be

willing to document their care responsibilities over a 1-week period through

photographs so that they could ‘show’ as well as ‘tell’ their lived experiences in these

low-income contexts. In support of this request, participants were offered verbal and

written briefs about the nature of the photovoice task. Anna also introduced a consent

form for gaining informed consent from anybody they photographed for whom they

did not have direct responsibility. Participants were given the option of taking

photographs on their own devices, for example mobile phones, or using the disposable

cameras from the study. Anna’s preference was for the participants to use their own

devices because she assumed, like her, participants would have a phone with which

they took photographs that they could easily share by email or text. However, the

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participatory action ethos underpinning this methodological strand, and Anna’s efforts

towards democratisation in offering marginalised groups a ‘voice’ on their own terms

(see Edwards and Brannelly, 2017), made it important to offer this choice. These

materials and the proposed choice between disposable cameras and personal devices

had been developed at an early stage of the study, prior to the two phases of ethical

reflection reported on in this article, and were reviewed and approved by formal

university ethics committee.

Even at the early stages of MPLC, however, Anna had serious concerns about the

potential liability of disposable cameras for the study data and the participants.

Disposable cameras are less reliable than personal smart devices or digital cameras

and they raise additional questions of quantity, research burden and cost. How many

disposable cameras should participants be provided with, for example? Each camera

only had a 24-photograph capacity and, with a high likelihood of poor image quality,

it was not clear how many useful photographs would be available via disposable

cameras. Collecting the disposable camera data also raised questions about research

burden. Anna considered supplying participants with pre-paid envelopes for the

cameras once they had been used, but this would necessitate participants posting them

in localities under-resourced in terms of post offices and post boxes, and in Anna’s

time frames rather than their own (Tarrant and Hughes, 2019). For participants in

contexts characterised by vulnerability, with challenging caring responsibilities, this

additional research burden was incommensurate with the ethos underpinning MPLC.

Also, data processing of disposable cameras carried an additional cost to the research,

as two sets of printed photographs were required: a set for the participants and a set

for MPLC. Given uncertainty around the image quality, it was not clear how many

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sets of photographs the participants would need to take, and therefore how many

would need to be processed. Finally, what would happen if disposable cameras were

faulty, and data (or the sources of knowledge) were lost? This would not only

constitute a loss of data to the study, but also a waste of the participants’ valuable

time.

Technology choices and institutional and funder ethical concerns

In this recruitment phase for photovoice, participants expressed reticence about the

technological niceties and challenges of sharing photographs taken on their own

devices. Their subsequent choice of the disposable cameras, initially intended as

backups, prompted Anna to reconsider the suitability of disposable cameras. She

questioned how far the cameras could produce photographs of sufficient quality not

only for the purposes of photo-elicitation in follow-up interviews but also for the

proposed end of study exhibition, which would use such photographs as documents of

everyday life (Plummer, 2001).

On deciding that digital cameras would be the best option for the study data and

mitigate against the host of difficulties which we outline above, Anna reengaged with

University ethics approval processes and was granted an amendment of the original.

Prior to seeking this amendment, Anna engaged in new conversations with the funder

about whether digital cameras could be purchased and given to participants as a gift.

The funder agreed that digital cameras could be purchased, but not given as a gift as

they would be deemed to belong to the study. The ethical concern was that an

incentive of this magnitude for participants in such under-resourced contexts would

constrain their ability to withdraw from the research. Also the cameras operated as a

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resource for the study and would be a loss if given away. This prompted questions of

ownership, which in turn raised a host of ethical considerations that formed the core

of the application for the amendment. In reflecting on ethical questions of harms and

risks, the authors identified two competing ethical orientations related to the safety

and well-being of the participant. The first was in the context of the study and the

interests of the university and funder; the second was related to the participants’

localities.

First, in the context of the study, the concerns were that lost, damaged, or stolen

cameras would be a loss to the project and require explanation to the funder, which

may implicate participants in potentially criminal investigations as a consequence of

participating in the research. Second, in the context of participants’ localities, the

concerns were that giving digital cameras to people in precarious situations may

introduce unnecessary risks to their personal safety. While both tensions map onto the

ethical principle of avoiding harm, some stakeholders may be prioritised over others.

In the first example, lost, damaged, or stolen cameras, harm may be sustained by the

study and therefore the funder and institution; in the second, risks are introduced to

the participant through exposing them to theft, or the opportunity to steal. Ethical

emphases thus have the potential of individualising different stakeholders in the

research and translating them into ‘risks’ to each other. In the authors’ ethical

deliberations, a shared discomfort around translating participants into ‘risky subjects’

led us to consider what sort of normative discourses around ethics, risk, low-income

contexts, and masculinity might be converging in producing our discomfort (see

Clark, 2013; Holland, 2007). This formed the basis of our reactive analytic work

which sought to explore how far these concerns might indeed map onto how

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participants engaged in the research.

In the first instance, in the proactive phase of designing the photovoice strand, we

consulted literature dealing with these questions and found similar tensions. While the

conflation of poverty with criminality has been challenged, empirical evidence does

suggest that living in poverty makes offending more likely (Kingston and Webster,

2015). This also supports experiences of colleagues working in similar localities as

the authors, where a participant had once sold a video camera from a research study

(see also Allen Q, 2012). However, simultaneously, poor, single young men have also

been identified as particularly susceptible to crime in the context of worsening

socioeconomic conditions and impoverishment (Webster and Kingston, 2014).

Concerns about the potential risks to participants are consequently also rooted in

empirical evidence. However, we suggest that over-cautiousness by researchers and

research institutions through withholding such resources as digital cameras may

infantilise participants and contribute to what might be described as a ‘double

silencing’ of marginalised people in marginalised contexts. Another concern was that

such withholding would reinforce the stigmatisation of these localities, which MPLC

had been trying to unpick. This apparently small decision to select digital over

disposable cameras therefore led to questions about how harm and risks are

normatively framed through ethical engagement and potentially fortify and embed

inequalities that the research sought to redress. We then resituated our ethical

reflection within the specific empirical context of the study by considering

participants’ reactions to the photovoice methodology.

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Phase 2, reactive ethics: participant-led ethical concerns about photovoice

Despite introducing digital cameras, the majority of participants declined the

photovoice. It is worth noting that the precarious positions of some participants made

photovoice problematic. Of the 26 interviews, four included young fathers living in

hostels who were not approached for photovoice. The precarious nature of their

accommodation made it unlikely they would be available for a follow up interview. In

addition, the relationships of these young fathers with their children were tenuous and

visits often fleeting, so opportunity for capturing photovoice data on caring practices

was limited. Another participant deemed himself too disabled physically to take the

photographs.

Out of the remaining 20, only 6 participants agreed to photovoice: four single men,

and a heterosexual couple who were kinship carers. This was surprising for a

participatory methodology that offers people an opportunity to shape research in ways

which articulate their lived experience. Furthermore, this speaks against assumptions

of people without paid work having more time for research participation (Houle et al.,

2018). The low take up rate of photovoice confirmed findings from linked research in

these localities (Hughes and Emmel, 2007–2012) with similar participants, which

identified these people as vulnerable to being tipped into chaos (Hughes and Emmel,

2011). Photovoice may therefore become an additional burden, requiring sustained or

systematic research participation and lacking fit with circumstances of precarity and

uncertainty.

Empirical findings from the photovoice

After Anna received university ethics approval to use digital cameras, she conducted a

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pilot to test the cogency of earlier concerns, providing one participant with a digital

camera and another with a disposable camera. The pilot confirmed that digital image

quality was far superior and supported the integrity of the data (see Images 1 and 2).

Of the six participants who agreed to undertake the photovoice task, one used a

disposable camera and three used the digital cameras. The fifth and sixth participants,

the couple, did not take any photographs with the digital camera supplied.

Empirically, the images from the four engaged participants informed MPLC in a

number of ways. The electricity bill (Image 2) was used in a follow-up interview to

explore different conceptions of care and caring within Shane’s narrative as a single,

unemployed dad. It also led Shane to discuss his attempts to provide for, and mitigate

against, the shocks and tipping points into chaos produced by large bills. This aligned

with findings from Intergenerational Exchange, (Hughes and Emmel, 2007–2012),

mentioned earlier conducted in similar localities with similar participants (Tarrant and

Hughes, 2019). The images also illustrated themes central to MPLC, such as caring

masculinities in low-income contexts. Image 1, for example, provided contrasting

data on masculinities in place, offering insights usually less accessible in a study

orientated to caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016). Comparison of images from across

the small participant group provided fascinating insights into the specificities of

men’s caring dynamics in low-income families and localities that did not emerge

through interviews. From this modest sample, then, it is possible to conclude that

despite challenges, photovoice is nevertheless a potentially fruitful methodology.

Participant-led concerns about photovoice

We were surprised at the low take up of what had been intended as an emancipatory

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form of research participation. On probing into why the participants refused to take

part in photovoice, three main reasons emerged: lack of appropriate technology and

software; insecurity with the task; and concerns about child protection.

In discussing the photovoice technology, all the participants who agreed to take part

said they had access to cameras on their mobile phones, but all reported that they

lacked the capability to use electronic sharing software, or had limited access to

computers,

Image 1. Picture in a booklet taken using a digital camera. Taken by Matthew, a

single father to a disabled adult son.

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Image 2. Using a disposable camera. Taken by Shane, a single father to two

daughters.

making data upload problematic for them. These difficulties confounded Anna’s

initial assumption that the participants would be able to manage the technicalities of

photograph sharing. Introducing digital cameras to participants meant that they were

not dependent on their own technology, and that Anna could collect the cameras and

upload them onto university owned computers without additional burden on the

participants’ time or other resource. The question of camera loss or ‘ownership’ in the

literature and in institutional ethics review was not raised by participants. The four

digital cameras handed out were returned and none of the participants described

additional vulnerability or lack of security because of having them in their home.

Indeed, one participant took his camera on a night out to take photos in his locality.

This was not for the purposes of the study, but suggests potential directions in new

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and creative participant-led methods. We suggest that where the technology and its

management fit people’s needs, technological and software barriers to participation

can be overcome. Furthermore, we observed that institution-led ethical questions of

data protection may unintentionally serve to emphasise inequalities and

disempowerment experienced as a ‘digital divide’ (Longley and Singleton, 2009).

Participants also declined the photovoice because they were uncertain about what an

image of ‘care’ or ‘caring’ might include. Anna offered examples of mundane,

everyday life activities, but many still declined. We would suggest that translating

academic concepts into practical activities of interest and meaning to participants is

difficult. Despite its participatory character, photovoice is not necessarily ‘accessible’

as an individual activity. In reflecting on this, Anna considered how a reluctance to

participate might reflect participants’ experiences of social isolation and loneliness

that they expressed in interview despite having caring responsibilities. Furthermore, in

the context of this study, photovoice individualised people’s participation and

engagement in their family in ways that did not fit with the research questions. We

reflect later on how this might be done differently.

Despite having consent forms which sought to mitigate against such concerns, the

third reason for declining to participate was worry about child protection issues. This

has provided the most fruitful analytic avenue for reflection. The majority of

participants who asked questions about child protection in relation to photovoice

refused to take part except for the couple with kinship care responsibilities who

agreed to take part, but did not take any photographs. As with other participants, the

question of what an image of ‘caring’ might be came up in discussion with this

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couple. When querying whether or not to take photographs of the children in her care,

the woman in the couple asked what she should photograph instead. In her discussion

with Anna, questions of child protection became more important than the research

questions, transforming the research into a ‘risky place’ for her.

Although being informed in written documentation about the study, the use of the

digital camera, and having Anna’s contact details, after a week of having the camera

the couple handed it to a social worker on a routine visit to their family who was

completely unconnected to the study. Interestingly, the social worker accepted the

camera. Anna discovered this a few weeks later when contacting the couple to ask

when she could collect the camera. Having found out the name of the social worker

from the participants, Anna had to get in contact with social services, locate the social

worker and pick up the camera, which had not been used.

Analyses of the process of recruiting this couple to photovoice, Anna’s discussions

with them, and their subsequent action of handing the camera to a social worker

without using it, suggested that the couple decided the risks photovoice posed were

best avoided. While an ethics of care underpinned Anna’s approach, the risks

identified by the woman had been unanticipated, and the potential harms to which the

participants may have been exposed fell beyond Anna’s jurisdiction. However

‘caring’ Anna may have been, it was the participant who identified the potential risks

of taking part, and who then managed them through avoidance. This incident also

highlighted that, despite an institutional requirement to gain informed consent and

provide written information as a principle of ethical practice, participants may

interpret the researcher and their role, in this instance as a social worker, in variable

22


ways (see also Brown, 2019; Hollomotz, 2018). In extension of these reflections, we

brought this case into critical conversation (Tarrant and Hughes, 2019) with existing

findings from the linked studies that describe high rates of formal health and social

care intervention in the lives of people in marginalised contexts (Emmel and Hughes,

2011; Neale and Davies, 2015). This facilitated additional insights into the profound

and multiple constraints experienced by these participants to resist intervention by

formal services. Our analyses suggested that constraints on research participation for

these people may mirror constraints in broader policy contexts.

Elsewhere, we demonstrate how formal services involvement for people in

marginalised contexts may be regulatory, but may also be a source of protection

(Tarrant and Hughes, 2019; see also, Emmel and Hughes, 2011). In the case of this

couple who confused the social worker with Anna, we may be seeing how, over time,

people in marginalised contexts conflate one professional group with another

regardless of what is explained to them. This is because of the potential regulatory

character of their role and power asymmetries in participants’ relationships with the

researcher and their institution (see also Hollomotz, 2018). Perceptions of ‘regulation’

are far less a matter of specific regulatory bodies such as ethics committees (e.g.

Hammersley, 2008), but support a more general experience of regulated life contexts

(Tarrant and Hughes, 2019). Furthermore, and in the context of this article, we are

also able to consider how the ‘risks’ perceived by researchers to participants as they

are framed through specific ethical principles, for example, ‘harms’, may be

misplaced. Instead of threats to security from or by theft, participants in this study

perceived the more likely threat to come from increased, and potentially punitive,

regulation.

Concluding reflections

23


What began as a fairly simple question about technology choice in MPLC became a

complex two-phased proactive and reactive process of ethical analysis. Our ongoing

reflexive engagement enabled us to consider how, and in which ways, researchers

may need to position technology in research so that it is accessible to participants.

Analyses of how participants responded to the photovoice task alerted us to how the

relationships in which participants are embedded may shape and constrain how they

take part in research. We would argue that considering the character of participants’

relational contexts, specifically formal health and social care relationships in the

context of MPLC, facilitates greater analytic engagement with how specific ethical

emphases may disrupt, challenge, or align with such relationships.

Our insights into why research may be risky for, or disempower, participants has

implications for democratisation in researcher–researched relationships (Crow, 2012;

Edwards and Brannelly, 2017). Despite operating with an ethic of care (Brannelly and

Boulton, 2017) a researcher’s ethical stance is contextualised by the formal

requirements of institutions, funders, project stakeholders, ‘gate-keepers’, and

community members (Neale and Hanna, 2012). Ethical decision-making is therefore

expressive of the contexts through which it occurs (Hammersley, 2008; Moore, 2012)

for both researcher and participant.

It is important to interrogate how the interests of different stakeholders may

conflict, intersect, and be balanced in different ways depending on the orientation of

ethical concern and scrutiny. Institutional ethics review processes have been described

as regulatory and constraining of research (Hammersley, 2008). However, while

24


ethics review may necessitate ‘translational’ work on the part of the researcher, it

nevertheless opens up a potentially fruitful critical space. By transforming ethical

governance processes and the substantive focus of MPLC into objects of analysis, and

bringing these into critical conversation with extant research findings from similar

fieldwork contexts, we were better able to observe the potential for ethical

engagement to unintentionally enhance inequalities throughout the research, and

therefore in the research findings.

As others have argued (Clark, 2013), situated ethics are not a panacea to ethical issues

raised by visual research but they may enable resolution of tension or conflict within

the contexts in which they arise. Our work challenges and problematises these very

contexts and identifies them as areas of study in which we are able to advance our

understanding of how and in which ways participants’ experiences are shaped and

represented. Ethical focus on researcher–researched relationships may unintentionally

conceive of power dynamics as those occurring within the relationship. As others

have argued (Edwards and Mauthner, 2012), while attending to these localised ethics

is important, the broader situated powerlessness of those being researched is often

emphasised yet obscured through such focus.

Questions about the loss, theft, or damage of cameras in research in low-income

contexts prompted by university ethics review were saturated with ambivalence and

prompted our analyses. In comparing early, proactive, ethical questions with those

emerging in fieldwork we found no supporting evidence for this. Digital cameras are

definitely the better option in photovoice. They can be relatively cheap for the project

and produce the quality of data required. We make three further observations. First,

25


we suggest that photovoice requires researchers to align technology and fieldwork

engagement with the needs and capabilities of participants in order for it to be

manageable for them. This requires a depth understanding of people’s contexts before

photovoice is introduced as a method.

Second, an over-emphasis on individual participation where the substantive focus of

the research is on social participation may render photovoice ineffective as an

emancipatory method. We suggest that community based approaches that include

training and involvement in developing both questions and purposes for photovoice

may be a more productive strategy. Third, surprising participant responses may

provide more insights into participant contexts than ‘successful’ research participation

(Jacobsson and Åkerström, 2013).

We conclude that ethical reflection cannot be separated from methodological,

theoretical, or substantive analysis. Our approach exemplifies epistemological

engagement with processes of knowledge production within which questions of ethics

become both the drivers to, and subjects of, analysis.

Funding

The research reported on in this article was funded by the Leverhulme Trust Early

Career Fellowship scheme, project code: ECF-2014-228.

Notes

1. Drawing on access case methods developed in these localities by Emmel et al.

(2007) and Hughes and Emmel, (2007–2012), participants for MPLC were identified

26


via third and voluntary sector agencies engaging with marginalised men in the context

of their family roles and responsibilities. The access cases also involved building

relational routes of trust and legitimacy both with key gatekeepers and informants

known to participants, and with participants themselves (Emmel et al., 2007). In this

way, the contexts of participants were always subjects of analysis and observation,

and this substantive and methodological orientation contextualised the two phases of

ethical reflexivity we report on here.

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Author biographies

Anna Tarrant is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Lincoln. Her

funded research has focused on men’s care responsibilities in low income families. In

January 2020, she will commence a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to conduct a

qualitative longitudinal and participatory study about the lives and support needs of

young fathers.

Kahryn Hughes is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Leeds, and

Director of the Timescapes Archive. She has received ESRC funding for several of

their flagship methodological programmes over the past fifteen years and has

primarily focused on methods innovation, addiction and poverty.

Date submitted 13 February 2019

Date accepted 5 September 2019

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