Participatory Action Research and Visual Analysis in Psychological Study: A Focus on Homelessness and Media
Course Announcements and Introduction
Class Survey: Nicole, the class representative for Psych 208, announced that surveys for both Psych 208 and Psych 306 have been uploaded to Canvas announcements. Students are requested to fill these out to provide helpful feedback.
Opening Remarks: The lecturer acknowledged the challenges students faced in attending the final lecture, specifically citing the wild weather and rising petrol costs.
Visual Research Framework: The lecture began with a focus on visual research workshops that aim to make the "invisible more visible" through storytelling and visual methods.
The Practical Impact of Small Acts: Humanizing the Invisible
The Overwhelming Nature of Social Issues: Researching issues like homelessness can feel overwhelming for a single individual. Despite years of research experience, the lecturer noted that no one person can "solve" homelessness; it is a complex issue marked by personal hardships, systemic cruelty, and difficult pathways.
Advice for Daily Life: Not everyone will become a qualitative researcher or volunteer at the Auckland City Mission. However, based on years of listening to those on the streets, the speaker emphasized that "tiny acts of kindness"—a smile, a chat, or a conversation—literally save lives.
Humanization: The most practical step for any individual is to humanize people on the street, resisting the urge to look away. This connects to the day's theme of analysis and dissemination: how we represent and understand others.
Lecture Objectives: Analysis, Media, and Dissemination
Participatory Action Research (PAR): Describe key principles of PAR, where impact is built into the deliberate design of the research.
Visual Analysis: Consider methods for analyzing visual materials.
Media Architecture: Conceptualize media as an aspect of visual architecture and explain why psychology should prioritize media in research orientations.
Five Steps for Visual Analysis: Outline a specific five-step process to bring order to the "chaotic mix" of methods, data, and action.
The Utility and Methodology of Photo Elicitation
Purpose of Photo Elicitation:
It is crucial for changing opinions individuals have of themselves and their environments.
It brings visibility to groups not receiving enough attention.
It humanizes large-scale statistics. The lecturer questioned: "At what point do the numbers start becoming offensive?" Stories permeate and resonate where numbers may fail.
It helps publicize problems and sway policymakers.
It assists in community assessments where surveys may fail to engage participants.
It captures the human experience when official records (agency demographics) are insufficient.
It documents processes, interventions, or ways of life that are threatened (e.g., the transient nature of homelessness).
It prioritizes depth over breadth, providing a proximal approach rather than maintaining distance.
Guidelines for Implementation:
Participation: The process should be participatory and collaborative from beginning to end.
Collaborative Planning: Projects should be planned with the community rather than imposed upon them.
Accountability: The lecturer stated that "Accountability is forever." Researchers must remain vigilant and use their work to spread awareness long after the data collection ends.
Training: Participants and researchers may need training on imagery guidelines and safety. Community members can be trained as research assistants.
Small Group Reflection: Regular meetings to discuss experiences (e.g., Caroline Wong's work with women in the Yunnan province).
Outcome-Oriented: Researchers must consider what the community actually gains. Research is often a "long game" where immediate outcomes are rare, but the wheels of change must be kept in motion.
The Application of Visual Research: Case Study in Tauranga
Transitional Housing Project: Early in her career, the lecturer was involved in a feasibility study for a transitional housing facility in Tauranga. Agencies like WINS, Mental Health Services, and the Ministry of Housing had advocated for this for a decade, but the council was reluctant.
Empirical Evidence and Impact: The research provided the necessary empirical evidence to show the need for the facility. This led to the creation of a transitional housing facility.
Tangible Outcome: The manager of the facility later shared the story of a client who found stability and reunited with family before passing away—a rare, direct example of research supporting human dignity.
Levels of Application: Visual research can be applied at:
Personal levels: e.g., educational lectures.
Service levels: e.g., improving agency services and cultural support.
Structural levels: e.g., advocating before judiciary boards or for national recognition of homelessness.
Principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Core Definition: PAR is collaborative, action-focused, and directed toward social change. It is highly complementary to Kaupapa Māori research goals.
Participation and Co-researchers: Participants are viewed as co-researchers. This honors "phronetic knowledge" (contextual, practical wisdom), treating participants as experts in their own lives while the researcher provides methodological expertise.
Shared Decision Making: Interpretation is a collaborative process to avoid researcher bias.
Action for Social Justice: Research is not just for intellectual curiosity; it must have a positive impact and a practical outcome.
Reflexivity: This is a continuous "checkpoint" for the researcher's own biases. The lecturer shared her personal experiences of shame regarding past biases when listening to the stories of participants like Daniel.
PAR Cycle: The process follows a repeating loop: Plan Act Observe Reflect.
Case Study: The Hamilton Public Library Controversy
Context: Hamilton Public Library is located in the city center, surrounded by nightclubs and stores (tattoo parlors, mixologists, dentists). Following a stabbing in the early hours on a weekend, the media and politicians immediately blamed homeless people.
Political Framing: Candidates for local elections proposed hiring security guards to exclude homeless people from the library. A journalist published an image of a man napping (who turned out not to be homeless and had not given consent) to support this narrative.
Researcher Response: The researchers, already working with homeless individuals in Hamilton, were asked by participants to intervene. They used existing data to build a "counter-narrative."
Engagement: Researchers engaged with the journalist, librarians, the public, and homeless people. They challenged the "us (domiciled public) vs. them (homeless)" binary.
Outcome: The calls for exclusion were dropped. The New Zealand Library Association conducted a nationwide survey, and this case has since been used internationally to prevent the exclusion of homeless people from public spaces.
Participant Perspective: Phil and the Significance of the Library
Phil’s Background: Phil became homeless at age after being removed from his family by state services. He was placed in a foster home near his family but forbidden from speaking to them, leading to deep psychological trauma and estrangement from his Whānau, Hapū, and Iwi.
The Reality of Shelters: Phil stayed in a Hamilton night shelter, which was a refurbished Chinese restaurant. These old models act as "warehouses for bodies," where bunk beds are crammed together and residents are only allowed inside from to .
Walking Exile: Because shelters close during the day, individuals enter a state of "walking exile," looping the city on free buses or walking river pathways.
The Library as a Cultural Gateway: Phil used the library to research his Iwi. He shared a book about his history; since he was separated from his culture, the library was his only way to access Te Ao Māori (the Māori world). He expressed a deep sense of "moke moke" (loneliness) and shame that he had to return a book that documented his own identity because it belonged to the library and not him.
Psychology and the Architecture of Media
Ubiquity of Media: Media is an inescapable part of the "visual architecture" of our lives. It is used to maintain social networks, find community in new countries, and bridge the digital divide.
Intergroup Relations: Media can either sustain or undermine relations between groups. During election years, homeless people are often used as "scapegoats" to appeal to voters.
Symbolic Power: Looking at whose voices are represented and whose are ignored reveals who holds symbolic power in society.
Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding Theory
Active Consumption: Contrary to older psychological assumptions that people are passive recipients, Hall argued that media consumption is an active process of interpretation based on social context.
Encoding: The process where media creators build a message with an intended meaning (framing certain voices as sympathetic or villainous).
Decoding: The process where the audience interprets the message. It is a circuit, not a linear path.
Three Audience Positions:
Dominant Position: The audience fully accepts the intended message (e.g., agreeing that a Nike ad’s success is purely due to individual hard work).
Negotiated Position: The audience partly agrees but resists some aspects (e.g., acknowledging hard work matters but noting the lack of a level playing field).
Oppositional Position: The audience completely rejects the message (e.g., disagreeing that hard work leads to success within current systems).
The Five Steps for Visual Analysis (Hodges and Chamberlain)
Identify Topic and Scope: Determine what data is needed (news items, stakeholder views, research logs). Identify if there is a tendency to talk about rather than to a group.
Grid, Plot, and Defamiliarize: Break open the "common sense" reading of a text. Use grids to track sources, relationships, and what is missing from the story.
Categorize: Select examples of framing and identify discrepancies across datasets (e.g., comparing Phil’s use of the library with media depictions).
Rewrite the Narrative: Reorder categories to link ideas and construct a counter-narrative. In Hamilton, this involved a four-part newspaper feature:
Section 1: The original article/controversy.
Section 2: Views of multiple stakeholders.
Section 3: How homeless men actually use the library to cultivate a sense of self.
Section 4: A challenge to symbolic power and the right to the city.
Interpret and Write Up: Construct the final counter-narrative. Acknowledge that all analysis involves selection and that objectivity is always partial.
Questions & Discussion
Audience Question regarding safety: "Where do homeless people go to be safe?"
Response: Shelters were suggested, but they can be scary, have strict hours ( to ), and are dangerous for some (e.g., Brett). The city is an option, but people are often "moved on." Consequently, the library emerges as a "beacon of safety" and an "internal intellectual space."
Discussion on "Move On Orders": The lecturer noted that despite the Hamilton success, move on orders are a recurring issue in Auckland. Building humanistic counter-narratives is a task that requires "constant vigilance."
Closing Message: The lecturer offered general life advice for navigating university and research, expressing that it has been a privilege to share these stories.