Module 5: Media Research Reflections
5.3 Creative collaborations
If you are doing research it is probably not only out of intellectual curiosity, many researchers also hope that their work will contribute to addressing the problem that they are exploring.
One avenue through which to raise awareness, promote public and policy debate or create new forms of representation is through working with the mainstream media and with creative artists too. Before rounding off this course we wanted to take a moment to reflect on how one can work with in this way.
Activity 1
Try to think of the different ways you might influence media representation, make a list, then look at the examples below.
- Responding directly to journalists who are covering a story and proactively approaching journalists to promote engagement with a particular ‘news hook’
- Acting as a live contributor (eg appearing as an interviewee on a news bulletin) (e.g. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5727t2X8Ck)
- Helping to formulate and develop a programme idea for an episode in a regular series e.g. we were involved in an episode of Radio 4’s “Inside the ethics committee”).
- Producing/presenting your own programme e.g. we co-produced a radio reflection on culture and coma for Radio 3 combining music and clips from our research interviews. (Remember to get the right kind of informed consent from your research participants if this is something you might want to do in the future!)
- Live tweeting key events, acting as a reporter yourself to encourage public debate (we tweeted key court cases and explain why and how you can do this here)
Action research can also be important, helping create ‘media events’ through working with people on the front line. For example we’ve supported families going to court and this led to the issues under consideration by the court featuring on all the main TV news bulletins. (You can read more about this in our article on working at the boundaries of academia, advocacy and activism)
When thinking about how one’s work might impact on the media its useful to think at creatively as possible of all the different ways of engaging, and then seek training and support to explore what can be achieved.
Activity 2
We really enjoyed working with different journalists, scriptwriters and artists using different medium. Each collaboration had something special. For example, the medium of shadow puppetry was great for being able to represent the person in a vegetative state without voyeurism or romanticism.
- Make a wish list of what type of media format or artist you would like to work with.
- Why does that attract you (maybe you already know something about the creative form or just think it would suit your area of research?.
- Add a comment to the comments section below.
I would love to collaborate on a video game. I love video games as a story telling medium as it puts the player in the shoes of the game’s protagonist and asks the player to choose to further the narrative and make their own choices about the next actions.
What a great idea lizze. JOMEC has contacts with various creatives (including ‘immersive experience developers and gamers) – you might think about developing an action-research proposal to then enact in your 3rd year. You could think about interactivity around ethical choices for examples ‘gamification’ around ethics is an emerging field I think. You could do the design and trial it, and write up the process and impacts
Hi Jenny, thanks for the lovely response! That sounds really interesting – would you be able to let me know more about third year action-research proposals?
If you are on the “Doing Media Research” course you need to prepare a research proposal and then, in the 3rd year in JOMEC, have the option of actually doing the research (or some other research you have decided to do). I was just wondering about possibilities here – search on media ethics and computer gamester gamification etc and you may find some things relevant. There is nothing to stop you doing action-research if you could find the right creative collaborator (demonstrating your own skill and commitment so they feel it is worth their time(
That’s wonderful and worth considering, thank you
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