Collaboration, the act of working together towards a common goal. All of us have had to collaborate with someone in our live, hell we are all doing it right now in this very class with our group projects. But collaboration in participatory media must also involve the people who we are trying to reach with our stories and projects.
Every story that we create as media creators may have a great effect on the people who are directly involved by the story or project. Having not only their input in how to best go about collecting data and then presenting in a manner that is both correct and fair to all sides.
Highrise was definitely the flashiest (no pun intended) of the works that we had to look at this week, but did it have the most collaboration? That I am not sure on, it did require the story tellers to reach out to the people that they were working with to get the access to the images and the stories that they were telling. But how much input those people had into the telling of their stories is up for debate, with what seems to be the storytellers telling the stories that they were told and then moving on to put them into their website.
Saving the Sierras on the other hand felt like true collaboration. The storytellers had a stake in the information that they were gathering and passing along and working with the people that they were telling stories on to put out their information. That is how collaboration between the story teller and the subject should go, if the story teller wants to give the subject input.
Collaboration can only go as far as the story teller wants it to go really. If they want true and full collaboration like in Saving the Sierras might be something that most story tellers do want. It forces them to give up some amount of control over their product and creation. However if they can get over no longer having absolute control then they get receive a greater participatory nature by collaborating with their subjects.
Brett I agree that Saving the Sierras did seem like the most collaborative. While I agree there was a collaborative feel in terms of producers providing the space for the storytellers to cultivate the content on the platform that was meaningful to them, I was amazed at the long list of other collaborators that helped the project take shape and come to life.
Along with project directors Catherine and Jesikah there was an eight person advisory board representative of the five partner organizations, seven funders, and almost twenty different members of the “project team”. Wow, what support! Imagine if it was just Catherine and Jesikah had worked on the idea by themselves trying to build community on this platform. It would have been near impossible for them to gather all of the relevant information on the issues, the different viewpoints, stakeholder interests, build support, obtain funding, develop the site, gain trust in the community in order to cultivate engagement. Not only would it have taken so much more time but I also doubt it would have been nearly as effective if not for the wide range of collaborator on the development end.
Brett –Your question about the depth of community connection in the projects we viewed this week is an important one. You comment that while Highrise was the “flashiest,” it may have been the least participatory, is premised on the assumption that collaboration and community connection come from the physical participation of participants, versus the thoughtful curation of select participants.
You hit on the fundamental tension between involvement in process versus product here, and I agree that it would require giving up some creative control for full community participation to happen. That said, I enjoyed Highrise the most, and felt more fully connected with a wide community of people as a result.
The question remains: is the depth of community connections generated by a piece predetermined by its actual involvement of people from said community, or can a well-crafted piece actually do more for a particular community than hands on involvement?
Your observation that collaboration can only go as far as the storyteller wants is poignant. It requires a willingness to relinquish some control over the creative process, but the rewards in terms of a more participatory and authentic narrative seem well worth it. Your perspective encourages storytellers to embrace collaboration for a more profound and enriching storytelling experience. Well articulated! <a href="https://ittelkom-pwt.ac.id"Thanks for sharing