In the course of the past three decades, participatory researchers have increasingly conducted empirical research within social movements as research activists in order to document, understand, and archive knowledge about social movements and media activism. While this trend allows for more directly experiential empirical research findings, it has also raised a host of ethical questions related to the exercise of power in research practices aiming to create equitable relations. Faced with this changing research-scape, participatory researchers are integrating a consideration of these questions into their research design and practice, with new approaches to ethics protocols, relationship building, discourses, and processes emerging.
The increase in participatory social justice research has happened in parallel withâand in opposition toâthe global neoliberalization of the university in which âcivic discourse has given way to the language of commercialism, privatization, and deregulationâ (Giroux, 2002, p. 426). These dynamics pose fundamental challenges to democratic education and research as universities shift operations to mimic corporations or edu-factories (Smeltzer & Hearn, 2015, p. 354) in which the objectives and outcomes of research structures are oriented towards market-driven imperatives. Students and research alike are measured and monetizable, translated into commodities with no regard for the public good which was once the aim and hallmark of a university education.
The neoliberal logic of higher education is particularly challenging for researchers in the social sciences because, âAs large amounts of corporate capital flow into the universities, those areas of study in the university that donât translate into substantial profits get either marginalized, underfunded, or eliminatedâ (Giroux, 2002, p. 434). Thus, in many instances, âthe ascendancy of neo-liberal globalisation has increasingly shut down the spaces for scholar activismâ (AGC, 2010, p. 246), labelling this type of research biased and thus delegitimized in academia. Even the most principled and ethical scholars are pushed towards quantified conceptions of their scholarly outputs, research grant acquisition, and so on, finding ourselves inadvertently supporting the neoliberal university in ways that run contradictory to our research objectives and outcomes outside the neoliberal university (AGC, 2010, p. 250). For those who are researcher activists refusing this neoliberal logic, Springer provocatively argues, ânegation, protest and critique are necessary, [but] we also need to think about actively fucking up neoliberalism by doing things outside of its reachâ (Springer, 2016, p. 287).
We are using the term media activism in a broad sense, with respect to both media genres (radio, print, news, music, digital, and so on) and activism forms (grassroots movements, civil society organizations, collectives, cultural production, pedagogies, and so on). Our view is that, related to the objectives of activism forms, media activist practices will depend on an array of social, political, cultural, and economic factors. We thus define media activism in a broad sense as the production of a wide range of media genres connected to communicative processes, in conjunction with a broad range of social justice activist forms that they support, with the shared objective of social transformation. We define research activism here equally broadly as research typically conducted within or with some connection to a university while simultaneously being within or with some connection to social movements, again, with shared social justice objectives.
In this chapter, we map out a series of questions regarding how ethics are put into practice in creating relationships based on mutual understanding and equitable power dynamics between media activists and research activists. We use these two structurally similar terms to indicate that both parties are activists, the one producing social movement media and the other producing social justice research. Both parties are committed to social change and write materials from interviews and observations to support social transformation. However, they are not always situated equally. While research activists working in social movements may have faculty jobs of one kind or another in a university setting, media activists working in social movements are often precariously employed. Although university researchers may also be precariously employedâas graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, or sessional instructorsâthere is often unequal access to power and resources between those with university positions and those who are strictly activists. This conditions the potential for not just structural inequalities but also conflicting interests, which may create some of the ethical dilemmas discussed in this chapter.
We take a global approach as we map out research-activist practices that attempt to build in ethical considerations relevant to social movements, social justice, and social transformation. These include but are not limited to: mutual accountability, relationships of care, building trust, participant ownership and control of knowledge, researcher and activist knowledge co-production, horizontality of relationships, decolonizing methods, consent-based research, self-representation and voice, and community pedagogies. We find that sometimes the research ethics we set out with will lead us into roadblocks, conflicts, or tensions between researchers and participants, despite the best intentions and practices of all involved. Moreover, research relationships will change over time, as will positions of researchers within universities and participants within social movements. Movements ebb and flow, while life decisions including campaigns, academic trajectories, employment situations, family commitments, and more may tend to shift the social locations of researchers and participants. How do research activists handle changing situations so that we may continue to support media activist movements and research while remaining ethical, trustworthy, and caring in our research-activist practices?
Ethical concerns linked to issues of micro- and macro-power configurations will depend on who is involved in the research process, as well as when and where the research is taking place. For instance, global research activists conducting research with media activists in other countries in authoritarian or complex political regimes, or engaged in research during a time of crisis or regime change, will need to find ways to keep both research activists and media activists safe in shifting regimes of macro-political power. Research activists may also consider power differences with respect to intersectional structures along axes such as race, ethnicity, social class, education level, gender, sexuality, and global power axes such as nation, global location, colonialism, immigration status, and so on. Moreover, with respect to these intersectional axes, it may become evident that a research activist or a media activist may hold contradictory positions of both power and marginalization. These may play a role not just in research outcomes but also in shaping ethical research practices when working in solidarity with or as insiders in marginalized groups. Further, if research activists find specific practices to be troubling or inconsistent with a participant media activist groupâs stated objectives, they may need to find ethical ways to engage in friendly yet political critiques while attempting to support the activist work on the whole. Finally, we acknowledge that research activists may be forced to consider other power dynamics related to the development of ethical practices that may not be accounted for by the current methodologies literature.
We have mapped eight key issues arising out of power relations, three from the activistâs perspective, three from the researcherâs perspective, and two with respect to reciprocal critiques and power asymmetries.
Activists: Beyond Extractive Research
One common question raised by different interlocutors is who benefits from activist research. Both activists and researchers have limited resources vying for their attention. Activists are usually pressed for time, crammed between the need for paid labour to support themselves and the desire to dedicate so-called free time to activism, so it is understandable that they might prefer to collaborate with researchers committed to proffering processes and outcomes beneficial to their movements. Researchers also juggle the potential conflict between the desire to use our research resources and time to support the social movements we believe in and pressure from funding bodies and university research structures demanding scholarly outputs and upward reporting. The trick is to find ways to collaborate towards the shared objective of social transformation while mitigating any potential negative impacts of competing demands.
When it comes to activist research, the argument that scholarly enquiry creates and expands knowledge is seldom sufficient for the activists with whom we research. There is always the creeping danger that we may be inadvertently engaging in what Waisbord (2019) calls extractive researchâa researcher extracts knowledge from movement activists, taking their time and resources without giving anything in exchange, and instead using this knowledge to advance their university career. Most of the time, research activists will have legitimate objectives that include social justice aims in our research with and as activists, nevertheless, what we have come to realize through the years is that our work might be seen in a different light by those who are strictly activists. We may also begin the research process while rooted in movements, and gradually spend more time on research as we are sucked into the university institution, slowly moving away from the activist milieu and losing sight of those more direct movement impacts. When these types of concerns are raised by activists participating in research, researchers, as the partners who represent institutional power, must take on the ethical duty of acknowledging the validity of such concerns and addressing them honestly and openly through discussion and dialogue, attempting to return to the initial shared objectives. We need to ensure we are making every effort in addressing the multidimensional conflicting power relations and sometimes divergent objectives that constitute activist research, committing our energy and time towards building relationships through open, generative dialogues. When activists cease to be the beneficiaries of research activism, then perhaps we are no longer entitled to consider our work as such.
Activists: The Contradictions of Anonymity and Consent
One of the ways activists may benefit from research is that their work may be amplified in books, articles, and publications that reference their project and the ideas they have shared in interviews or focus groups. Standard research ethics protocols make it mandatory to get consent from participants, and part of this process also includes the provision for anonymity to protect participant data. However, sometimes pseudonyms are inadequate to conceal the identity of a speaker, for example, in a small project or media activism milieu. This may lead to ten...