Social Impact Symposium: Speakers & Abstracts

We are living in a historical moment known for its emphasis on media engagement and anticipated impact. The evolution of mobile media technology, the ubiquity of social media, and the omnipresence of multiple media platforms have led to new and evolving modes of interaction as well as magical thinking about the infinite possibilities to create change with the documentary impulse. The interactive conditions of digital culture align with a significant historical moment: growing political and social upheaval, economic crisis, dissatisfaction with representative government, and disillusionment with state institutions. While the documentary genre is frequently conceptualised as a democratic tool with civic potential, the way it functions in the process of social change is variable, contingent and riddled with ethical considerations. The advocacy film is a time-honored tradition in documentary history, made specifically for the aims of democratic exchange and yet the documentary industry is slow in confronting its own political tourism legacies, recording social injustices where the most significant benefit of production serves filmmakers and not the communities on the screen. While the commercial documentary industry has embraced a top-down impact model, there is another grassroots participatory media model worth considering as an ethical pathway to redistributive justice with the documentary impulse. This presentation will focus on contemporary production practices within this evolving public commons where documentary moving image discourse is a vibrant pathway of political exchange. Focusing on the relationship between documentary and collective organising in the US historical context, the presentation will suggest that participatory, collective and community media practices can be harnessed to correct the tendencies of problematic tourism and surface level transformation.

This presentation undertakes a detailed analysis of animated explainer videos from BRAC (Building Resources Across Communities), the largest NGO in Bangladesh, to demonstrate the use of locally customised narrative strategies for development communication. Established in 1972, the year after the Bangladesh’s independence, BRAC was ranked number one NGO on March 2020 by NGO Advisor, an independent Geneva-based media organisation. Referring to narrative strategies suggested by global animation practitioners, the chapter provides details on creating two kinds of explainer videos, expository and instructional. These narrative strategies, “Meet Bob,” “Announcement,” and “Process Overview,” outline ways of incorporating complex information into short videos in a concise and efficient manner. Although the animation examples chosen for this presentation are aimed towards creating awareness for women’s rights issues these strategies are applicable to other development communication topics.

This presentation discusses the social impact of Zanzibar Soccer Queens (ZSQ - Florence Ayisi, 2007). The documentary presents a portrait of Women Fighters’, a group of Muslim women determined and proud to redefine their positions through playing football, while calmly resisting the cultural ‘norms’ of how a woman is supposed to behave. The impact of ZSQ has been profound through local and international reach with a ‘ripple effect’.

The research context and conceptual framework for ZSQ was based around postcolonial revisionist dialogues of decolonising the cinematic gaze with specific reference to cultural representations of African People. The research aimed to communicate perspectives, lived experiences of women and their identity, and visible evidence of an African that has changed and continues to transform. This objective reflects the broad agenda of Third Cinema. Hence, the research for ZSQ employed ethnographic methods in mediating and unveiling the women’s stories, documenting their activities and subjective perspectives in ways that would engage and enhance audience empathy on an emotional level. The process of documenting the women’s stories and activities represents some of the ideas of “strategic impact documentary” proposed by Kate Nash and John Corner (2016). It is in this context that the film aimed to be strategic in engaging and enhancing audience empathy on an emotional level.

ZSQ was disseminated widely and screened at numerous international festivals with resultant local-global impact. For the players, the film was a catalyst for renegotiating their identities and transcending their stigmatised status of “hooligans” to become “cultural ambassadors” when they were invited to Potsdam (Germany) in 2009; this was the first impact activity enabled by the film.

Their visit became the impetus for facilitating dialogue amongst different stakeholders, and inspiring strategic links between Potsdam and Zanzibar (Tanzania), which eventually led to a Town Twinning Partnership in 2017.

The ‘Sister Cities’ partnership has delivered a vast array of projects and engagement activities which are ongoing in both cities and are having significant impact and benefits. These include exchange visits, environmental projects, community development initiatives, renovation of a botanic garden. These projects are creating impacts into the environment, social welfare, culture, and society, and manifesting rich, and tangible benefits for people in both cities.

The presentation will discuss some of the partnership projects, the impacts, and resultant benefits. It will also offer provocations and reflections on the dynamics of global citizenship, and the role of documentary film in bridging gaps of cultural understanding and representations in cross-cultural contexts.

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The presentation will include short video clips to explain and evidence some of the projects, engagement activities and impact claims.

Zanzibar Soccer Queens - Full-length film is on Vimeo and YouTube.

Critique of widespread impact models  

Audio-visual media impact is often referred to out of context. Some use it rhetorically to sound serious, others use it in a quantitative manner only, without any consideration for the qualitative aspects. Others again consider the psychological impact rather than a psycho-social impact or the impact on democracy.  

Grant committees within public funding agencies, public broadcasters or foundations, as well as juries within the interactive documentary (i-doc) niche - a dynamic subset of audio-visual media - have in many cases developed criteria for evaluating digital storytelling productions. The value of an interactive documentary is there often solely established on the basis of quantitative and easy to measure metrics… and this is where the main critique of makers and scholars vis-à-vis this model resides.  

What is more, in research on i-doc impact, widespread impact models tend to be biased towards the impediment of technical innovation, bent towards commercial objectives or easy to measure criteria. By better contextualising and detailing the notion of impact with the help of applied knowledge, we can offer a reference point.  

The reason why impact is such a central notion is because it reflects the ethics, culture and values that can be drawn from the production of digital documentary processes. 

Integrative model of impact 

Based on the grounded impact expectations of i-doc makers inducted from my own doctoral research, the common characteristics of i-docs, as well as latest impact literature, I will present a Multilayer impact framework that differentiates between product and process.  

Forms of impact developing during the process of production 

The main forms of impact developing during the process of production are what I call the re-use triad, meaning the Content re-use impact (on maker peers; cultural, media and educational sectors), the Format re-use impact (on maker peers; cultural, media and educational sectors) and the Tech re-use impact (on maker peers; cultural, media and educational sectors). Additionally, there are four other impact forms that I will explain: Common ground impact (on maker peers); the Workflow impact (on maker peers; media and cultural institutions); the Positioning impact (on maker peers; media and cultural institutions) and, the Partnership-induced impact (on cultural, media and educational sectors). 

The aim of this session is to identify hard to measure impact criteria while challenging traditional impact models. 

Effective A/V media impact campaigns rely on a great story well told.  Impact strategy is about how to reach and engage audiences and inspire action. How has the pandemic affected this work, and what do practitioners need to learn to move forward?  How might academic researchers share actionable information so that those stories that have the power to advance positive social change, actually do so?

Let’s start with the essentials. First, story matters, and visual storytelling is particularly powerful.  After leaving the White House Barack and Michelle Obama (who know a thing or two about communicating and leading change) created a media production company, “We created Higher Ground to tell great stories,” noted the former President.  Their first documentary “Crip Camp” was Oscar-nominated, which led to the first fully accessible Oscar ceremony, and a revitalised conversation on disability rights.

Second, the pandemic made undeniable the need for human connection. Media Impact Producers have long known the value of the shared viewing experience. “Community screenings” are the sine qua non of this work. 

The virtual gatherings that replaced in-person experiences offered the benefits of expanded reach and greater access, if not the beautiful contagion of laughing together in a movie theatre.

The new reach and access were amplified by a global reckoning on racial justice, all  highlighting the necessity of equity from production through distribution.  As storytellers and impact producers we are accountable to the communities whose stories we document and share. Indeed, campaigns that are not co-created with communities may be doomed to fail.

From a practical perspective, campaign strategy starts with identifying goals and key audiences to help achieve them, then mapping how to reach the relevant people. Impact Producers rely on partner organisations to reach both off-line and on-line audiences. Evaluation is both qualitative and quantitative, and notoriously challenging.

In this talk, we will explore how campaign strategy and activation changed during the pandemic, and ask what we should carry forward from this collective experience?  (And what do we leave behind?)  As society returns to a new normal, how might we reimagine community in a post pandemic world? 

The example of the successful German drama “Systemsprenger” (“System Crasher”, 2019), is used to show how to produce and distribute a fiction feature film that also addresses the social relevance of depicted issues - in this case in the field of childcare and therapy. The film reached more than 650,000 viewers in German cinemas and more than 5 million on free TV in Germany. But, it has also raised awareness of the issues in local and regional governments, nursing homes, schools and other institutions. The presentation also explores how television broadcasters and film sponsors can promote 'committed filmmaking'. Ultimately, the key question is: Which attitude and consciousness should one adopt when producing films?

Using the lenses of Postcolonialism with leanings towards Critical Race Theory, this presentation is based on the research drama-film, Paint Brush (forthcoming), for which I am the screenwriter and director. The discussion will explore tensions of cultural stereotype and hybridity that instruct the construction of the story’s protagonist named Promise, and unpack how her character-arc is created with consideration to the vestigial colonial legacies of migration, in a diasporic Nigerian home, in London.

In this regard, the paper will attempt to underscore how colonial vestiges of inferiorisation (Fanon 1963; Iwowo 2011) and colonial mentality (Fanon 1967;  Wa Thiongo 1992; Kuti 1977) might engender a crisis of cultural-identity in British-Nigerian youths, and amplify their vulnerability towards gangs. It will also argue that the cultural complexities of female characters like Promise can be better understood via the theory of Intersectionality (Crenshaw 2014) and Africana Womanism (Hudson-Weems 2004), rather than of Feminism. Indeed, Ntiri (2001) and posits that the diaspora female of African descent is primarily considered in the context of the dynamics of her race and class, and how they influence her essence.

Ultimately, this paper speaks of a postcolonial research project centred on black (media) representation: One which aims to open a space that includes the contributions of Nigerian diasporic stakeholders, to the subject-matter of knife-crime in London, in which their youths are nuancedly implicated, by UK media.

Key words:Postcolonial storytelling, migration, black female protagonist, cultural tensions, black teenage identity, practice-led research.

Upon becoming the United Kingdom’s official Paralympic broadcaster for 2012, Channel 4 set out with the explicit intention to “create a nation at ease with disability” according to their Disability Executive, Alison Walsh. They pursued this through a) unprecedented exposure of para sport, including over nine hours a day of live sport, plus extensive build-up programmes, b) a ‘no-holds-barred approach to the portrayal of disabled people’ (Walsh, 2015, p. 49) c) marketing Paralympians to the British public with an emphasis on athlete backstories in order to familiarize audiences with GB para-athletes, and d) developing disabled talent both on screen and in production. All of these practices formed a significant shift from those of the former Paralympic broadcaster, the BBC, and were explicitly aimed at challenging existing media stereotypes (see Pullen, et al., s, 2018).

In this presentation I will present the findings of an AHRC-funded project that examined the intentions and practices of Channel 4’s broadcasting of the Rio 2016 Paralympics; the influence of this on the content of Paralympic coverage and mediated forms of disability representation; and the wider impact on public attitudes toward disability. I will demonstrate the extent to which socially progressive forms of disability representation can and do effect positive social change with respect to disability awareness. I will argue that both the quality and quantity of Paralympic coverage by C4 has been an important vehicle in progressive forms of disability representation marked by greater inclusion, education, and visibility of disability. At the same time, I highlight some of the complexities and contradictions in the Paralympic legacy with respect to issues of inclusion and exclusion, empowerment and disempowerment, and forms of marginalisation.

Coming soon

Audiovisual media (mostly) is created to have an impact on people. It aims to touch the audience’s hearts and minds, to challenge the viewers/listeners perspectives and probably to change their attitude and behavior. But how do we know, whether a film, a video or a TV program has the intended social impact? Or an impact at all?

In order to find answers to these questions it is useful to develop a common understanding on what ‘social impact’ is and how it is generated. Here a “theory of change” or a “logic model” can be helpful tools that serve as a starting point for a project that intends to create positive change.

(How) Is this applicable to audiovisual media? Knowing your target audience/group and defining impact goals can be a starting point to think about and to plan for social impact. There are numerous approaches that audiovisual media can choose to have an impact: participatory production, educational formats, creating awareness through advocacy for a certain cause, just to name a few.

Depending on the target audience, the impact goals and the type of project, there are ways to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of an intervention. What tools are useful and what questions should be asked (and answered) in order to gain an understanding of the social impact of an audiovisual media project?

Last but not least audiovisual media is not only a medium to create impact. Audiovisual media itself can be a tool to evaluate impact.

Coming soon

The aim of this film practice was to research the notion of ‘the everyday’ and to contribute to methodological discourses. I asked four of the twelve women, who were being trained to be video reporters by a local Indian government project, if they would use their cameras to film their everyday lives. For me, it was important that the women were in control of image production so after giving the four filming groups blank tapes, I left them to individually decide what to film and how to film it. I then filmed them as they shot their own government project film and asked them questions in ‘video diary interviews’ to produce five different sources of footage that were edited together so that the filmmaker/researcher’s voice and the voice of the subjects were ‘blended in such a manner as to make it impossible to discern which voice dominates the work…films where outsider and insider visions coalesce’ (Ruby, 1991).

When asked to develop an Impact Case Study, I soon discovered the challenges in evidencing the scale of impact that was claimed by the women. In this paper, I reflect on what I would have done differently from the beginning and in what ways I think creative practice can successfully demonstrate real and measurable impact.

Key words: rural India; participatory filmmaking; visual ethnography; impact