School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, USA

September 27 2004

This paper analyses the role of participatory photography in assessing entertainment-education initiatives. Participatory photography puts the camera in the hands of the people, who are encouraged to document and co-share their own reality through photos.

According to the authors, the process of taking a photograph provides an opportunity to develop a story that was previously rejected, silenced, or overlooked. Further, the photograph's narrative becomes a participatory site for wider storytelling, spurring community members to further reflect, discuss, and analyse the issues that confront them.

The authors discuss an initiative in which eight disposable cameras were handed out to the listeners of Taru, an entertainment-education radio programme in India. The purpose was to gauge the influence of Taru on audience members in certain villages of Bihar, India. As opposed to asking subjects questions, and thereby constraining the nature and scope of their word responses, they were asked to capture Taru's influence on them (or their community) through the language of images.

The paper concludes by discussing the potential and caveats associated with this visual approach to participatory communication.