Camera Phone Image-Taking and Collective Meaning Making: Engaging Japanese Adolescents in Relational Understanding of McDonald’s

• In Event: Thinking Ourselves “Out of” and “Into” Visual Research Methodologies in Education

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of my paper is to explore visual research as a pedagogical practice. It is based on an ethnographic study of Japanese adolescents’ camera phone image-taking and collective meaning-making in relation to McDonald’s and contemporary fast food cultures. It highlights the significance of ‘relational’ understanding as a productive way of thinking about visual research.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
The research is grounded in several concepts and ideas. David Buckingham’s (2003) account of youth creative “media production” in the context of media education helps understand how young people creatively engage in media work to explore and reflect on their changing subjective positions in contemporary convergent, participatory media culture. Henry Jenkins’ (2006) concept of “collective meaning-making” helps understand how youth produce meaning by informally teaching and learning from one another. This research adopts a “need-to-know-more” stance as advocated in Wendy Luttrell’s (2010) photovoice project. The idea of ‘relationality’ articulated in the work of Nicholas Bourriaud (2002) and Dónal O’Donoghue (2010) is instrumental in understanding young people’s collective meaning-making as a space of encountering something new, fun, unexpected, and contradictory.

Methods
Research was conducted in Okazaki city, Japan in 2009. Eight high school students aged between16 and 17 participated. Participants were asked to use his/her own camera phone to take one or two photos that responded to the following questions: (i) What does McDonald’s mean to you? (ii) What is your relationship to McDonald’s? The image-taking component of the research was followed by ‘group photo-elicitation’ interviews.

The camera phone image-taking, which is one of the most familiar and accustomed mobile media practices to the participants, was instrumental in visualizing what matters to them about McDonald’s as ‘local’ interpreters. Group photo-elicitation interviews helped generate the participants’ collective meaning making.

Data Sources
In addition to the image-making process described above, data sources included field notes produced during observation and analysis.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions
The eight participants came to understand the dense array of meanings in play while thinking about how McDonald’s fits into their lives through their camera phone image-taking and group photo-elicitation interviews. During the interviews, the participants engaged in discussions and debates by sharing and negotiating new knowledge in the form of collective meaning-making. The participants extended their own and others’ mobile photos beyond original intention as they uncovered the meanings behind the photos and generated relationships between what the photos represent, suggest, and make them imagine.

Scholarly Significance
This research highlights the importance of participation and collaboration by not only putting a familiar and accustomed visualizing tool (i.e., camera phone) in the hands of participants but also providing them with an informal space of teaching and learning. Research findings highlighted the significance of ‘relational’ understanding as a way to think differently about visual research, which needs to transcend the issue of essentialising the ‘visual’ (Bal, 2003).

Author

• Masayuki Iwase, The University of British Columbia