Oldal 103 [103]
102 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
personal life episodes. This creative activity was followed by interviews and a
focus group discussion in which the students formulated critical reflections
on the living conditions and gaps in care for vulnerable groups. In the process,
students from different socio-economic backgrounds developed closer
relationships and formulated action plans (Obuaku-Igwe, 2021). The Photo¬
Voice project represents a learning process with an intercultural approach and
a transformative effect, as students undergo changes in attitude. The stories
and dialogues revealed the details of the examined social problems, which
provided significant findings for the research.
A combination of Photo Voice and research interviews is the Photo¬
Elicitation Interview (hereinafter referred to as PEI), which was used to
interview adolescents by Pabian and Erreygers (2019). The researchers
explored the prevalence and forms of online bullying and found that during
individual interviews adolescents had difficulty recalling everyday life events
related to bullying. The researchers avoided using focus group interviews
for data collection, as the compliance constraints related to the age of the
participants would have influenced their data. The researchers decided to
use PEI, a participatory narrative research method in which a photograph
taken by the researcher or the interviewee forms the starting point of the
individual interview. In designing the method, the researchers also took
into account that their research subjects (n = 34), a sample of 13-14-year¬
old Belgian students, interacted online with peers through pictures. The
target group was present on social media platforms where self-presentation
and messages are characterized by fragmentation: adolescents communicate
using less written text and more voice messages and memes. The students
had to choose three images a day for five days for the research, which also
could be screenshots. The researchers did not specify the content, but the
adolescents were informed that they had to document their interactions with
their peers. Students could only take the pictures with their peer’s consent,
just as they could only participate in the research with informed consent.
After five days, the researchers recorded semi-structured interviews with the
students, who were asked to describe the characteristics of their everyday
online interactions based on the pictures. The coding and annotation of the
interview transcripts and pictures were carried out independently by the two
researchers using Nvivo software. This method allowed a deeper insight into
the world of online adolescent communication. Although the students found
it easier to evoke their experiences in interview situations with the help of
images, the method had certain limitations: the data were still idealized in
many cases, as students did not send photos referencing negative events.
Moreover, the sending of pictures was also highly dependent on the students’
knowledge of technical tools.
Arts-based participatory research methods include the dramatic Forum
Theatre, which actively involves the audience in solving the moral dilemmas of
a pre-written play. The audience is a special group that can make comments,