Appreciative Inquiry and Extended LanguageVideo Representations of Community and Future by Rural

Costa Rican Youth

by

Candidate 38119

Word Count: 13,665

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the intellectual, emotional and

material support that has allowed me to complete this research and dissertation. Firstly, I

thank my wife, Erika for her constant optimism and support through the duration of this

project. She encouraged my immersion in this project, tolerated my long absence to collect

data, and proofread my final draft not once but twice. I would like to thank my family,

particularly my parents who have always encouraged my education and so kindly sent care

packages from abroad. I would like to thank my grandfather, who is the only person to have

expressed interest in reading my dissertation: I appreciate your enthusiasm!

I would also like to thank Professor Cathy Campbell for her inspiring course and

constant encouragement. I am also greatly indebted to my dissertation supervisor and

originator of the theory upon which my coding framework is based, Dr. Sandra

Jovchelovitch. I thank my fellow Health, Community and Development and Social

Psychology institute classmates for their support and commiseration, particularly Hilde

Bryhn and Martin Krengel, who were sounding boards for many of my ideas.

I would like to thank Casa de la Juventued, particularly Jeison Ariel Bartels for his

support and coordination of the Costa Rican portion of my research. I absolutely could never

have done this without his help. I would also like to thank the hospitable and inspiring

communities of Berlín, La Ribera, Los Reyes and Los Vegas not only for their participation

in this research, but also for housing and feeding me during my visit. I hope that they

enjoyed the process as much as I did. I would also like to thank Alexander Steffler and

Professor Patrick Humphreys and his London Multimedia Lab for their generous donation to

Digital Roots, which made this project possible.

2

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………………………………….…….2

TABLE OF CONTENTS.........................................................................................................3

ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................6

RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS................................................................................8

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND........................................................................................9

SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS....................................................................................................9CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS...................................................................................................11APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY........................................................................................................12EXTENDED LANGUAGE.........................................................................................................16POSITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: COMBINING AI AND EXTENDED LANGUAGE...........................19

RESEARCH DESIGN...........................................................................................................21

DATA ELICITATION: QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL METHOD AND DIGITAL VIDEO......................21Participants and Partners................................................................................................21Group Formation.............................................................................................................22Community Description...................................................................................................23Introducing the Project....................................................................................................24Filming and Editing.........................................................................................................24

DATA ANALYSIS...................................................................................................................25RATIONAL FOR THE CODING FRAME....................................................................................26ISSUES IN THE CONSTRUCTION & APPLICATION OF THE CODING FRAME...........................31

RESULTS................................................................................................................................33

COMMONALITIES..................................................................................................................33Narrative..........................................................................................................................34Actual vs. Future Actions.................................................................................................35Outside Donations vs. Local Resources...........................................................................36Protagonists.....................................................................................................................36Environment and Infrastructure.......................................................................................38

COMMUNITY COMPARISONS.................................................................................................39Los Reyes..........................................................................................................................39La Ribera..........................................................................................................................39Los Vegas.........................................................................................................................40Berlín................................................................................................................................42

DISCUSSION.........................................................................................................................42

GENERAL TRENDS................................................................................................................43The Omnipresence of Hope..............................................................................................43The Focus on Youth..........................................................................................................44

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PROMPTS.......................................................................................44Link Between Positivity and Strategies for Collective Action..........................................44

3

Link Between Resources, Past Successes and Self-efficacy.............................................45DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COMMUNITIES...............................................................................46LIMITATIONS AND OPTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH..........................................................47

CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................49

BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................51

APPENDIXES...........................................................................................................................I

APPENDIX I: VIDEO PROMPTS.................................................................................................IAPPENDIX II: COMMUNITY LIST AND PROJECT DATES...........................................................IAPPENDIX III: EXAMPLE PARTICIPATION FORM....................................................................IIAPPENDIX IV: CODING FRAME.............................................................................................IVAPPENDIX V: CODED NARRATIVES.......................................................................................IVAppendix VI: English Coded Transcription, Audio and Visual Summary.......................xvii

4

Abstract

In this dissertation I explore the hypothesis that appreciative inquiry (AI) used in

conjunction with a multimedia extended language methodology is better able to foster self-

efficacy, empowerment and hope in participants than traditional critically-focused

methodologies relying upon restricted language. I begin by building a theoretical framework

for my hypothesis, drawing from the theories of social representations, critical consciousness,

AI and extended language to construct a theory of positive consciousness, through which I

argue that AI and extended language are able to inspire self-efficacy, empowerment and

hope. I then use a narrative analysis of twelve participatory videos recorded and edited by

youth groups in four rural communities in southern Costa Rica in response to three different

prompts to explore the application of AI and positive consciousness. In general, my findings

support the hypothesis that AI is better able to foster self-efficacy and empowerment than the

neutral or traditional prompts, through all of the videos have consistently high levels of hope.

The results from this limited application of the theory and methodology, while encouraging,

suggest the need for future research.

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This "outgrowing" proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.- Carl Jung

5

Introduction

Traditional community development projects tend to arrive with predetermined,

expert designed interventions that are imposed upon communities, usually with the best of

intentions. These projects are often effective in achieving their quantitative goals—building

the target number latrines, for example—but often fail to achieve sustainable development.

The external nature of these interventions leaves communities out of the decision-making

process, often resulting in projects that are ill-suited to the physical and cultural reality of the

community and therefore either fail and or are abandoned soon after completion. These

traditional projects are rarely sustainable because they are designed from the outside without

consulting the community and often rely on outside resources and technical expertise.

More progressive community development projects arrive in communities with

questions rather than projects; they work with the community to determine their needs and

motivations, and take this information into account when designing interventions. By

involving the community at least partially in the design process, these projects are often

better able to meet both their process and outcome related goals than more traditionally

designed projects. While the level of community involvement varies wildly, ranging from

mere consultation to management and evaluation, some level of community participation is

now the norm in development work. Yet despite the current widespread commitment to

community participation, most development projects and health interventions arrive in

communities with a needs-based approach and a negative attitude. They begin with the

assumption that there is something wrong with the community that needs to be fixed or that

the community is lacking something that needs to be provided. While it is true that many

communities are under-developed and that there may be urgent necessities, I believe that

critical needs-based development is limiting and possibly damaging to communities.

6

The form of positive development I favour is called appreciative inquiry (AI) and

involves asking unconditionally positive questions in order to identify and replicate positive

deviants within the community. This process is energizing and inspires hope, while seeking

to maximize local resources and knowledge, resulting in increased sustainability and

empowerment. I also believe that the use of spoken and written language can be intimidating

and limiting to underdeveloped communities, less formally educated populations and

marginalized groups such as women, children or indigenous people. I believe that the use of

multimedia extended language can help to overcome the limitations of traditional or restricted

language by encouraging confidence, creativity and new perspectives. Extended language

can help both marginalized participants and researchers as “a combination of words, images,

and music enlarges our consciousness and the possibilities for health promotion research and

practice” (Chávez, et al., 2004). When used in combination, AI and extended language have

the potential to reach out to and involve communities in their own future.

In order to investigate the potential of AI and extended language for improving

community development projects, I conducted a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project

working with digital video and youth groups in rural Costa Rican communities for two

weeks, from 20 March to 6 April 2007. The goals of my PAR project where threefold: to

conduct research on the effects of AI on representations, hope, empowerment and self-

efficacy, to provide rural youth with an opportunity to use digital video and to provide

communities with a resource to present their thoughts to the world, particularly potential

founders of development projects.

7

Research Question and Hypothesis

I hypothesize that a methodology combining AI and multimedia extended language is

better able to foster hope, empowerment and self-efficacy in participants than a traditional

negatively focused needs-based intervention strategy conducted in restricted language. I

theorize this is so because the aforementioned methodologies foster positive consciousness or

empowerment, self-efficacy and hope among both the participants and facilitators. AI helps

communities to dialogue with ‘expert’ knowledge, making its conventionalization into

community life more likely. AI uses the anticipatory function of representations to utilize

past successes to positively affect the future. Additionally, working with the creativity and

freedom of multimedia empowers participants because it utilizes extended language to bypass

the restrictions and epistemological hierarchy imposed by restricted language, allowing

people to communicate more effectively and credibly while discovering previously unutilized

resources and possibilities in a fun and potentially sustainable way.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of AI and extended language methodologies’

impact on representations, empowerment, self-efficacy and hope, I conducted a quasi-

experimental research project involving youth groups from four rural communities in Costa

Rica. Each group developed a participatory video about their vision of community and the

future in response to one of three different prompts: one positive (AI), one neutral and one

traditional or needs-based. Each community split into three groups and they all used digital

video, a multimedia extended language methodology, to develop their responses to one of

these three prompts. I then conducted a qualitative narrative analysis of the twelve videos

created, looking for the potential effects of AI and positive consciousness on empowerment,

self-efficacy and hope.

8

Theoretical Background

Social Representations

At a broad level, my research is grounded in the theory of social representations

developed by Serge Moscovici concerning social knowledge, both its production and

transformation. Interested in the effects of social context on the development of everyday

knowledge and the ways in which knowledge is communicated between contexts or

lifeworlds, Moscovici developed his theory based on data collected from 1959 to 1960 in

France regarding popular understandings of psychoanalysis by different social groups,

including professionals, Catholics and communists. Social representations theory breaks with

the traditional view of psychology, anthropology and many other disciplines, which arrange

knowledge into a hierarchical procession ranging from lower or primitive to higher or

civilized forms of knowing. Moscovici’s concept of cognitive polyphasia, the idea that

individuals and groups possess different, sometimes contradictory, knowledge and logic

simultaneously, provides an alternative to the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and

provides a cornerstone for theories about the potential of multimedia to encourage dialogue

between facilitators and participants in community development projects. Similarly,

cognitive polyphasia is a key aspect of the theories of critical consciousness and AI, which

hold that local, everyday forms of knowledge are not inferior to external or expert

knowledge, supporting the idea that development strategies which work with local knowledge

will be more successful than those that attempt challenge or displace it. Conventionalization,

“the process whereby images and ideas, received from the outside by an indigenous group,

assume a form of expression that is reconstructed as a function of the technical and cultural

conventions of the receivers” (Jovchelovitch, 2006) is most likely when local knowledge is

respected and blended with outside knowledge. Moscovici’s theory highlights how

9

knowledge is distorted through the process of conventionalization, which informs my

hypothesis that a multimedia AI methodology is able to illuminate and reduce the distortion

of knowledge as it is conventionalized.

Social representations theory is concerned with meaning and symbols rather than

information and processing, buttressing my argument that the use of video can encourage

dialogue. Video is a medium that utilizes the power of images and symbols to encourage and

facilitate the dialogue necessary for conventionalization, potentially lessening the

misunderstandings between different knowledges and lifeworlds. The development of

multimedia narratives by community members can help to illuminate a community’s social

representations, collective memory and social identity, which often remain unconscious,

thereby complicating dialogue. I am also interested in the anticipatory function of

representations, the idea that representations of the past and present cognitively, socially and

emotionally influence the construction of the future. “Cognitively they do so through the

construction of projects, which correspond to cognitive anticipations of things to come;

socially, through the construction of utopias, which correspond to the projection of vision

about how things should be in times to come, and emotionally through the experience of

hope, which corresponds to the emotional field in which anticipation operates”

(Jovchelovitch, 2006). The anticipatory function of representations is key to my hypothesis

that AI prompts will result in more positive representations of past and present actions and

therefore are likely to encourage hope, empowerment and self-efficacy in the future. Because

“storytelling is one of the fundamental media though which communities understand their

past and present and project their aims for the future” (Jovchelovitch, 2006), positive video

narratives have the potential to influence future making.

10

Critical Consciousness

Paulo Freire’s theory of conscientização, or critical consciousness, is the basis for a

key aspect of the theoretical foundation of my research. Freire’s concept highlights the

importance of local knowledge, empowerment, dialogue and collective action for community

health and development. In Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire makes a distinction

between education and massification. He argues that massification is a paternalistic and

disempowering act, often disguised as education which attempts to domesticate people into

conforming to the status quo of those with power. For Freire, massification is the extension

of knowledge from those with power to those without. Massification and extension are

inherently hierarchical and characterized by dominance, lovelessness, arrogance,

hopelessness and mistrust (Freire, 1973). Education and the development of critical

consciousness, on the other hand, are encouraged through facilitation rather than teaching.

Participants are encouraged to think for themselves and relationships are horizontal rather

than vertical. To apply his theory, Freire developed an innovative model of teaching literacy

designed to encourage “fresh contributions” through dialogue rather than focusing on the

transfer of “inert ideas” as is common in traditional teaching methods (Freire, 1973).

Freire demonstrated the importance of utilizing local knowledge as the basis for the

development of critical consciousness. In order for people to truly understand their situation,

they must be able to locate their new knowledge within their lifeworld. In other words, new

knowledge should fit with existing knowledge in order to facilitate conventionalization. The

development of critical consciousness takes place through a dialogical process, where the

facilitator and participants exchange, combine and discuss local knowledge and outside ideas

(Freire, 1973). Both parties are changed in the process and no one knowledge displaces

another, but rather both knowledges are combined to form a third, hybrid knowledge. This

11

idea is inline with the theory of cognitive polyphasia. Critical consciousness is a process of

empowerment which allows participants to critically examine their present situation, identify

the obstacles to change and ultimately take collective action to achieve change.

Freire’s theory is important both as a technique and for its emphasis on the connection

between the individual and social aspects of change and collective action. The distinction

between education and extension, along with the focus on the dialogical interaction between

local and external knowledge is crucial to developing empowerment and achieving collective

action. I diverge from Freire’s theory of critical consciousness because I believe it over-

emphasises rationality and negativity while downplaying the importance of emotion,

dismissing it as the basis for “naïve rebellion”. Additionally, it encourages people to identify

and organize themselves against obstacles rather than for the development of pre-existing

strengths and resources. I believe that Freire’s concept of conscientização can be utilized

more effectively by dropping the critical of critical consciousness and replacing it with the

unconditionally positive focus of AI and the freedom and creativity unleashed by the use of

extended language and community narrative. My modification of Freire’s theory, positive

consciousness is further outlined below.

Appreciative Inquiry

The theory of appreciative inquiry comes from the field of organizational

development and was developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University

in the 1980s in an attempt to positively address the physical and psychological effects of

social inequalities and underdevelopment. AI is based on social constructionism and believes

that “knowledge is an artefact of the culture, myths, traditions, values and languages of

12

people in systems… thus there are multiple ways of knowing, multiple realities and no one

way has primacy over another” (Finegold, et al., 2004). AI attempts to avoid the negative

psychological impacts of disempowerment, a common by-product of the displacement of

local knowledge by traditional health and development interventions, by asking positive

questions. When people become overwhelmed by their problems and lose hope, the resulting

emotional state “reduces creativity [and] thus lessens human potentials, skills and capacity”

(Chapagai, 2000). Therefore, instead of asking what is wrong AI asks what is right,

attempting to locate positive deviants, such as well-nourished individuals in a malnourished

community. AI uses local knowledge by seeking to replicate what is working in the

community rather then investigating what is wrong and importing outside ‘expert’ solutions.

“As an alternative approach, the appeal of [AI] lies in its premise that communities can drive

the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing (but often

unrecognized) assets…” (Mathie, 2002). By asking positive questions, AI is able to build

hope and pride, empowering communities by showing them that they already have the

knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their goals. By asking “unconditionally positive

questions the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and

innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiralling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream,

and design” (Chapagai, 2000). AI seeks to identify and replicate successes rather than ‘think

critically’ about problems. AI’s focus on the use of local knowledge and past successes as

the basis for development and behaviour change helps to ensure that interventions work

within the local lifeworld, eliminating the distortions of translation suffered when external

knowledge is imported.

AI prides itself on being as “simple as 1-2-3-4” because it is built on one goal, two

laws, three principles, and a four-step planning and action cycle. The goal of AI is to “seek

13

the root cause of success” (Chapagai, 2000). The two laws are: “what you seek is what you

find” and “where you believe you are going is where you will end up” (Chapagai, 2000). The

three principles of AI are as follows: “if you look for problems, you find more problems”, “if

you look for successes, you find more successes” and “if you have faith in your dreams you

can achieve miracles” (Chapagai, 2000). AI involves a four-dimensional cyclical process,

which theoretically does not end but rather continues to develop and evolve over time. The

first step in the AI process is the discovery phase, which involves a collective identification

of past success and the organization’s life-giving source. The second phase of AI is the

dream phase, where the newly discovered knowledge is used to form the future vision of the

organization, focusing on how it could and should look based on what has worked in the past.

The third phase, focused on design, planning and prioritization involves a collective dialogue

where the discovered past and future dreams are used as a framework upon the social and

technical plan is built that will allow the organization to replicate their past success,

capitalizing on what makes it unique and gives it life. The fourth phase in the AI cycle is the

delivery or destiny stage, when the plan designed in phase three is realized. This process

involves the “co-construct (of) the future through innovation and action” (Chapagai, 2000).

Everyone in the group is encouraged to take immediate action towards the realization of the

plan. The AI process highlights the importance of every participant, encouraging him or her

to take responsibility for his or her actions and commitments. The four-dimensional process

of AI is flexible; organizations will never just be in one phase at any time. Instead, the

process is flexible; as opposed to a static step-by-step process, it is a continuous cycle that

oscillates between the four phases.

Though both methods emphasise consciousness, the AI method is the opposite of

Freire’s critical consciousness with respect to its positivity. Freire’s method uses critical

14

thinking to position people against the obstacles to their empowerment, whereas AI uses a

positive technique to position people for the creation and replication of positive deviants

based in local knowledge and history. Critical consciousness is an effective methodology

because by focusing on the negative it angers people, motivating them to participate in order

to change their situation; when people are unsatisfied or angry, it is relatively easy to unite

them to take action against their oppressors. However, once the goals of action against others

are met, the motivation for participation fades: it is much more difficult to motivate a content

population to take collective action. Critical consciousness is rooted in a Cartesian

worldview where individuals and communities are thought of as disconnected and power is

zero-sum. AI avoids this limitation by organizing for rather then against, taking a positive

path to arrive at the same outcomes as critical consciousness. “Seeing the glass half-full as

well as half empty is not to deny the real problems that a community faces, but to focus

energy on how each and every member has contributed, and can continue to contribute, in

meaningful ways to community development” (Mathie, 2002). Because it is positive and

creative rather than critical and destructive, AI can be more effective than critical

consciousness in empowering people and inspiring hope; AI methodologies have “enabled

villagers to reclaim their sense of competency and renew their sense of agency in their own

community in a way that well-intentioned traditional development efforts may well have

diminished” (Finegold, et al., 2004). In the next section, I will outline how AI can be

combined with multimedia narratives to illuminate a community’s unconscious social

representations, collective memory and identity, facilitating a positive form of critical

consciousness firmly rooted in local lifeworld and knowledge which I call positive

consciousness.

15

Extended Language

The concept of extended language comes primarily from the field of decision analysis

pioneered by Patrick Humphreys and Patrick Brézillon. There is general agreement in the

field of decision analysis that decision-making requires both information and power. The

rational choice paradigm argues that decisions are made through rational analysis of the

available possibilities through the use of restricted language (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002).

Possible courses of action are evaluated through the creation of individual mental or shared

communicated stories or scenarios where the action is played out and evaluated by the

decision makers. According to this concept, spoken, written and thought language based on

the use of words are restricted because words are created and defined through a shared and

limited set of meanings. The cultural and grammatical rules that allow words to be

understandable by everyone who speaks the language also limit their meanings and therefore

exclude some potential courses of action

For decision makers with limited resources and power, the confines of restrictive

language are often crippling. “Telling, developing and refining stories in restricted language

usually does not help decision makers… where the courses of action which can be

represented and explored within them always end up in blocked opportunities, undesirable

consequences or require non-available resources” (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). When all

of the potential courses of action conceivable within the confines of restricted language are

either impossible or undesirable, decision makers are left with two options: do nothing or exit

the situation. These options are negative for both the community and the decision makers

because they typically result in social exclusion. For example, leaving the community is a

very common decision in San Isidro, where I conducted my research, so common that it has

the highest level of emigration to the United States or to San Jose of any province in Costa

16

Rica. Because of this, the option of exiting the situation or emigration is very present in the

minds of youth. They are surrounded by a constant disappearing act by peers and relatives,

and that combined with the unrealistic image of the United States presented in the media acts

to essentially seal their fate (both of the communities and their own). The negative social,

physical and psychological impacts of emigration are well documented and have a visibly

negative impact on many rural communities in and around San Isidro (Skeldon, 2002). Yet

through the use of extended language methodologies, participants may be able to discover

new resources, providing them with alternative decision making possibilities.

This problem is further complicated by the traditional assumption of decision analysis

and development that “‘excluded people’ are simply unable to take appropriate actions by

and for themselves and so the responsibility for problem identification and decision-making

should be transferred to external agencies” (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). In many cases,

there are a number of external agencies offering conflicting prescriptions for action. The

young decision makers are confronted with the impossibility of complying with the differing

and unsatisfactory or impossible actions demanded of them by the different organizations,

resulting in additional stress. “These external institutions… aim, to act ‘on’ or ‘in’, rather

than ‘with’ the community” (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). The actions of these

institutions often further disempower youth by demanding they conform to contradictory

demands, further exacerbating the situation.

One of the main goals of my research is to provide youth with tools to make their own

positive decisions with the resources available to them within their communities, which

brings me to the theory of rich language and extended language. The theory of extended

language is built on the assumption that youth are capable decision makers whose potential is

blocked by restricted language, conflicting prescriptions of external agencies and negativity.

17

Through empowerment, creativity and positivity, rich language unblocks decision making

potential, allowing youth to reconceptualize their communities and their options for action.

Rich language does not rely on words or restricted meanings, but is instead a multimedia

language consisting of images and sounds, which by definition are open to creative

interpretation and can lead to the discovery of previously unnoticed resources, agency and

potential courses of action. Stories developed with rich language “involve showing as well as

telling what is, and what could be, rather than being told what should be” (emphasis in

original), allowing people to develop their own positive solutions, free from the conflicting

and unsatisfactory prescriptions of others (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). Rich language

can provide the key for youth to unlock their creative potential and self-efficacy.

However, because rich language is so open and unrestricted, it is difficult for people

to arrive at shared understandings or interpretations, sometimes stripping rich language of its

ability to communicate knowledge and ideas. Additionally, the radically open nature of rich

language makes rational analysis impossible; there are no fixed meanings to work with—only

a collection of variables. Therefore, restricted language is necessary to “turn fantasy into real

action” (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). This is where extended language comes in.

Extended language is a combination of rich and restricted language that allows for both

creativity and rational analysis. “Restricted and rich languages do not compete for

hegemonic interpretations, but jointly provide extended language that can support innovative

decision-making” (Humphreys & Brézillon, 2002). Extended language combines rich

language multimedia stories, which allow for innovation, with restricted language, which

allows for evaluation and sharing. “Story-composing in rich, audio-visual language, provides

innovative knowledge, for content-generation and structuring in restricted language” and

18

takes of the form of a spiral between rich and restricted language (Humphreys & Brézillon,

2002).

Digital video is an ideal tool for facilitating extended language because it is able to

capture moving images and sound, in an easy to use, immediately accessible and relatively

inexpensive format. “Video combines music with visual images to communicate a mood and

synthesize complex information”, allowing communities to easily and concisely

communicate complex meanings and information (Chávez, et al., 2004). In order for the

spiral of extended language to take place, it is important that the participants enjoy the

process; otherwise they will lose interest in the project. Another advantage of digital video is

that youth are usually very interested in working with video cameras and enjoy being able to

see and hear themselves and their friends on screen. Because modern digital video cameras

have built in LCD screens, decision makers are able to see their recordings in real time,

making the experience much more authentic and engaging. “Participatory video-making acts

as a bridge between multiple communities, invigorating partnerships and implementing

creative collaborations” (Chávez, et al., 2004). In short, extended language helps to even the

playing field for youth to participate in decision making and dialogue by providing them with

a way to express themselves, which fosters creativity and self-efficacy.

Positive Consciousness: Combining AI and Extended Language

Positive consciousness, the combination of extended language and AI, provides a

powerful tool for moving beyond the limitations of our current worldview towards a new

paradigm in which participation and equality are possible. Both AI and extended language

are positive methodologies that take advantage of the subjective nature of reality, maximizing

19

creativity and hope, while helping to transcend the current paradigm and its resulting

contradictions, which limit the effectiveness of participation. Freire demonstrated the value

of extended language by linking images to words in order to teach literacy and empowerment

in rural Brazil (Freire, 1973). The powerful effect of extended language when combined with

critical consciousness could be even more effective if combined with AI instead. Both AI

and extended language are able to illuminate previously unseen resources and possibilities;

“such unrealized resources include not only personal attributes and skills, but also the

relationships among people through social, kinship, or associational networks” (Mathie,

2002). In addition to unearthing hidden assumptions, video narrative productively unleashes

the creative potential of extended language to discover previously unnoticed pathways for

decision-making. Extended language provides an alternative medium to articulate and share

knowledge for those who are intimidated by restricted language due to a lack of formal

education, resources and self-confidence. This is particularly important in rural and

indigenous communities where centuries of isolation and discrimination have taught

generations of people that speaking out is dangerous.

AI is “concerned with how to link micro-assets to the macro environment” and when

combined with the communicative power of extended language, can help communities to use

positive consciousness to form partnerships and grow their bridging social capital (Msyhir,

2002). Extended language helps to even the playing field, moving closer to Habermas’ ideal

public sphere by making it easier for communities to form productive partnerships with more

powerful groups. Multimedia extended language therefore more closely approximates an

ideal public sphere by empowering those with limited education or understanding of formal

language a more equal voice to participate in a dialogue between knowledges and lifeworlds.

20

In short, “video has the potential to open communication and promote dialogue” (Chávez, et

al., 2004).

Research Design

Data Elicitation: Quasi-Experimental Method and Digital Video

Given the time and budget constraints of conducting MSc research, I decided it would

not be possible to conduct research to separately compare extended language and AI

methodologies against traditional needs-based development techniques. Because of this, I

decided to use extended language digital video for the entirety of my research and design a

quasi-experimental Participatory Action Research project to investigate the effects of AI

positive prompts on video representations of community and future. Specifically, I focused

my research on the effects of AI on participant hope, empowerment and self-efficacy when

used in conjunction with an extended language methodology.

Participants and Partners

I decided to work with youth for a number of reasons, most notably because it is an

area of interest and experience for me professionally. Additionally, youth are often more

available and receptive to participating in community projects and are typically interested in

digital technology. Youth also represent a minority group within their communities,

sometimes in numbers but almost always in terms of power and voice. Because of this lack

of decision-making and representation, youth are more likely to benefit from the use of

extended language than other community groups.

21

I chose Costa Rica for logistical reasons, primarily convenience. From my previous

work in community development with Amigos de las Americas, I had a well-established

relationship with Casa de la Juventud (CASA), a Costa Rican non-profit organization which

forms youth groups in rural communities to encourage youth leadership and community

development while providing youth with opportunities to complete their formal education at a

reduced cost. CASA’s primary interests in the project were to provide their youth with the

opportunity to participate in digital video projects and to create the videos as tool to present

the communities’ voice and vision to potential founders in the hopes of attracting future

development projects.

I conducted the project in conjunction with Digital Roots, a not for profit organization

I founded in 2006. Digital Roots seeks to empowers communities around the world to

investigate, document, and share their culture and history by using environmentally friendly

digital technologies to create physical and virtual exhibitions and museums. Digital Roots

strives to preserve the uniqueness of the past and present to create a sustainable future

through the creation of museums, the accumulation of knowledge and the promotion of

cultural tourism. Digital Roots is committed to the use of both AI and extended language and

was therefore interested in the research results of this project.

Group Formation

In each community, I divided the participants into three groups and gave each a

different but related prompt which they responded to with a video about their community at

present and their vision for its future. The first group in each community received an AI or

positive prompt, focusing on the resources of the community and how they could be used to

achieve the group’s vision for the future. The second group received a neutral prompt, asking

22

generally about the community and their vision for the future. The third group received a

traditional or negative prompt, focusing on what the community lacked and what they needed

in order to achieve their future vision. The English and Spanish wording of the three prompts

can be found in Appendix I: Video Prompts. Additionally, I had planned to conduct focus

group interviews with each of the twelve groups to further explore their perceptions of the

project, though after attempting them in Los Vegas with minimal success, I abandoned the

idea. The participants were very uncomfortable expressing themselves in words and did not

like being recorded, though they were much more comfortable expressing themselves through

narrative and extended language in the video.

Community Description

CASA selected all four of the small, rural communities I worked in based on interest

in the project and the ability of the local youth group to organize the logistics. I prefer to

work in small, rural setting for two reasons: firstly, due to their strong sense of community,

and secondly due to the logistical ease of organization. Additionally, these communities are

relatively isolated and therefore the youth had not previously had access to digital videos

cameras, the novelty aspect of which no doubt attracted many of the project participants.

In Los Vegas, the first community I visited, we completed the project in a single day.

Among the twenty-five participants, the majority were youth ages 8-12, though each group

also had several young children and one adult female participant, with the later assuming a

leadership role. The project in La Ribera was similar, with around twenty participants,

mostly in their teens and only one adult. Because school was in session, we completed the

project in two consecutive afternoons. Los Reyes, the least rural community with the greatest

number of residents working in San Isidro, the closest city, had just twelve participants

23

including one adult in each group. Like La Ribera, Los Reyes also took two afternoons to

complete the project (for the same reason). The final community, Berlín, completed the

project in one day, with between ten or twelve participants in each group, two of which were

led by teenaged girls.

Introducing the Project

In each community I divided the participants, attempting to balance gender and age

between the groups. I then introduced myself, and explained the goals and methodology of

the project. I passed out participant consent forms, an example of which can be found in

Appendix III: Example Participation Form. Once the forms were read and signed, I gave a

very brief demonstration of how to operate the cameras along with some general pointers for

capturing quality video and sound. I then explained the concept of storyboarding and passed

out blank storyboard sheets to each group. Immediately afterwards, I dictated the prompts to

each of the three groups separately. The groups wrote the prompt on their storyboard sheets

and then spent an average of thirty minutes discussing the video as a group and filling in their

storyboard before filming.

Filming and Editing

Each group was given a JVC mini DV camcorder and a one-hour tape and asked to

film and edit a five to fifteen minute video responding the prompt they were given. The

majority of the groups spent a few minutes becoming familiar with the workings of the

camera and asking me questions about the project, their prompt or about the operation of the

cameras before beginning to film. Most of the groups spent several hours filming, typically

capturing between thirty and forty-five minutes of video. After the filming was completed,

24

each group took turns transferring their video to a Digital Roots laptop, an Apple PowerBook

G4, and editing their movies with iMovie. Each group was given the opportunity to do their

own editing, though they all preferred that I actually press the buttons while they provided the

artistic direction, deciding what and where to cut and what transitions and music to add.

During the editing process there were typically members for all three groups present and in

many cases some group members had to miss a portion of their editing session due to other

commitments. The completed videos and photographs are available on the internet on the

Digital Roots website: http://www.digitalroots.org/sanisidro.html and on the enclosed DVD.

Data Analysis

The rich multimedia nature of my data presented a difficult challenge for analysis. As

the saying goes, an image is worth a thousand words; digital video consists of sixty images a

second, multiply that by an average of ten minutes of video, times twelve videos and the

result is a tremendous amount of visual data. Combined with the audio content of the videos,

which is also notoriously complex, consisting not only of the words but also aspects such as

tone, speed, language type, music, background sounds, my greatest challenge was having too

much data to analyze given my limited time and resources. I needed a complexity reducing

analytic method that would allow me to condense my data into a manageable quantity while

still preserving the richness captured by the video. Because the communities were asked to

develop multimedia stories responding to the prompts they were given, a narrative analysis of

the videos they produced seemed like a natural fit. Narrative analysis allowed me to maintain

the complexity of the videos while at the same time condensing the data to the basic

storylines, making them easier to compare and contrast.

25

While narrative analysis seems like an obvious way to analyze my data, it was not the

method I started with. I first decided that the scene or shot (change in camera angle) would

be the best unit of analysis because the shots are easily identifiable and tend to be limited to

one location and topic. Using this as a guide, I divided the videos into shots, summarized the

audio and video content of each shot and transcribed the narration in Spanish. I recorded the

length of each shot (in seconds) and used that information to weight the significance of the

codes assigned to each scene. I planned to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative

methods to triangulate my findings. However, after spending many hours working with the

data in SPSS attempting to measure correlation, variance and the frequencies of the coded

scenes, I discovered that the majority of my results were not statistically significant and did

little to explain the levels of hope, empowerment and self-efficacy present in the videos.

After reviewing my data again and consulting with my fellow students and lecturers, I

decided to move away from my attempt to use quantitative analysis and instead focused

exclusively on a narrative analysis of the videos. It became clear that what was most

important in the videos was not what was within individual scenes but rather how they were

ordered and interrelated, again suggesting a narrative analysis of the storylines rather than a

scene based analysis.

Rational for the Coding Frame

The theories underpinning my research suggest a complex interaction between the

prompts given and the resulting levels of hope, empowerment and self-efficacy present in the

videos. Using the storyline or narrative as the basic unit of analysis and combining my

theoretical assumptions with observations that arose from the data during transcription and

26

the application of my previous coding framework, I constructed a coding frame to compare

the videos by community and prompt in order to explore the validity of my theory.

My original coding frame emerged during transcription while thinking about the

content of each scene, the who, what, when, why and how of the images, words and sounds in

each scene. This coding frame matched almost exactly with a theoretical framework for

understanding and interpreting knowledge developed by Dr. Sandra Jovchelovitch in her

book Knowledge in Context, which also asks the questions who, what, why and what for of

knowledge in order to understand the social psychological contexts of knowing. When

developing my second coding frame for the narrative analysis, I decided to preserve the

aforementioned structure of questions, this time working on the narrative level rather than the

individual scene. This second interaction of my coding framework, a combination of

Jovchelovitch’s questions with traditional structural techniques of narrative analysis, was

much more successful at preserving the complexity of the interrelation between these

questions than my previous attempt. A table of the definitions for my second coding frame

can be found in Appendix IV: Coding Frame.

I analyzed each video and divided each into its basic storylines, ranging from one to

four per video. I used the minimalist definition of narrative outlined by Tomashevski, where

narrative is understood as “a perceived sequence of nonrandomly connected events”

(Franzosi, 1998). Many of the videos also included content that I labelled as other, because it

was descriptive in nature and did not fit into any of the narratives developed in the video.

After identifying the distinct storylines present in each video, which were mostly but not

always continuous, I coded them through a combination of my modification of

Jovchelovitch’s questions who, what, when, why and how and several classical narrative

27

analysis techniques of structural analysis including, sequence, reversal, character role and

actants (Franzosi, 1998).

The who of each narrative is a question designed to show identity and was therefore

combined with a structural analysis of the character role, allowing for both a structural and an

epistemological exploration of representations of identity in the videos. “The question of

who is doing the representational work and in relation to which significant others this work is

taking place is central to define the conditions of representability of a knowledge system”

(Jovchelovitch, 2006). The theories of AI, critical consciousness, social representations and

my theory of positive consciousness point to the importance of representations with respect to

the development of hope, empowerment and self-efficacy, all of which are forms of future

making. My coding of character roles is based upon those outlined by Propp’s during his

extensive analysis of the narratives present in Russian folk tales, which he reduced to a

simple typology of seven based on their actions: villain, donor, helper, sought-for-person,

dispatcher, hero and false hero (Franzosi, 1998). While apt, this typology of character roles

was too complex for the purpose and goals of my analysis, so I simplified it to an

identification of protagonists, obstacles, helpers and the objects or goals of each storyline.

While attempting to succinctly summarize each storyline, it became apparent that the

who was fundamentally linked to the why of each narrative. The characters and their actants

only took shape with the addition of why. Here I used Greimas’ three interrelated pairs of

actants to classify each character in the narrative as either a sender or receiver, a helper or an

opponent and a subject or an object (Franzosi, 1998). For example, the obstacles and helpers

in a narrative can only be determined by knowing both who is acting and why they are acting.

The why of representations is always linked to desire and therefore is a crucial factor for

determining not only why but also who (what character role) is being represented. “The why

28

of representations goes far beyond its cognitive function, to include the symbolic function…

it represents the logic of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and in this sense it is always open

to express motives and intentions that are ruled by unconscious process” (Jovchelovitch,

2006). Why is driven by desire and includes the “not-yet-conscious or not-yet-become”

which is also present in dreams, narratives, play and art (Jovchelovitch, 2006). I identified

each protagonist, obstacle, helper and object of the storylines in order to explore the who and

why the video narratives.

The what of each storyline can be understood through the identification and

sequencing of the actions that take place in the narrative. “The ‘what’ of representations

refers to the construction of the object, the content ascribed to it, and the solidity of symbolic

environments” (Jovchelovitch, 2006). In order to identify what happens in each storyline,

when it happens and how it happens must also be identified. I identified, sequenced and

linked together the actions of each narrative with a plus sign denoting the combination of

actions and an equals sign to link causes with suggested effects. Then I labelled each action

or result as past, present or future to sequence the narrative. Finally, I identified the reversal

s. A reversal is a turn of fortunes; Greek plays are categorized as a comedy if the reversal

results in an improvement of the situation and as a tragedy if the situation worsens during the

narrative (Franzosi, 1998). I used the reversal as an indication of the level of hope and

optimism present in the narratives.

The how of each storyline is also linked to the what or actions and sequence of the

story. The cause and effect relationship also proved helpful in identifying the presence of

hope, empowerment and self-efficacy in the narratives. Because “communication is

produced in communicative action and the analysis of communication is central to define

modalities of representations and the form and functions of a knowledge system”, when

29

actions performed by the community were described as contributing to or resulting in the

reversal or the realization of the object or goals, the narrative can be said to show

empowerment and self-efficacy since the results stem from actions that are within the power

of the community to undertake (Jovchelovitch, 2006).

I decided not to code the what for of the narratives because according to

Jovchelovitch the what for of knowledge is always to make the “unknown known” and would

therefore be the same for all of the storylines (Jovchelovitch, 2006). The who, why, what,

when and how of each narrative explored through the analysis of the characters, actants,

actions, sequence and reversal help to explain how the unknown is made known through the

representations presented in each video.

Once I applied the aforementioned codes to each storyline, I used them to develop a

one-sentence summary of the narrative in order to compare the different forms and types of

narratives produced by the different communities and from the different prompts. I then

combined the codes, summary and example text from the video transcriptions into a table for

each narrative and created pie chart to visually represent the percentage of each video

dedicated to each of its subsequent storylines. Assuming that the amount of time dedicated to

each storyline correlates to its importance, these charts provide a useful point of comparison

for exploring the differences and similarities among the different communities and prompts.

A complete list of the tables and pie charts for each video can be found in Appendix V:

Coded Narratives and an English translation of a video transcription can be found in

Appendix VI: English Coded Transcription, Audio and Visual Summary.

30

Issues in the Construction & Application of the Coding Frame

While my second coding framework for narrative analysis is better than my first

attempt (content analysis coded by scene), like any reduction framework, it results in a loss of

complexity and richness from the original data. While I believe that an identification of the

characters, actants, actions, sequence and the reversal is able to capture the who, why, what,

when and how of each narrative, much of the representations present in the videos are lost in

the process. While other interpretations of the data are both possible and plausible, I believe

that the coding framework I have chosen to reduce my data is well suited for the task. As is

the case with all qualitative research, my coding is unavoidably subjective and influenced by

my own assumptions, experience and actions. Since part of my hypothesis is that the use of

multimedia extended language and AI should help to ease the mixing of my perspective as

the external change agent with that of the participants, the acknowledgment and identification

of my own subjectivity and influence over the data can potentially be productive for my

research.

In order to identify the assumptions that influenced my work, I will attempt to clarify

and explain some of them here. To begin, the use of video limited the community members

to representing images and sounds from the present and therefore may have influenced their

allusions to the past and the future, which is a structural limitation of the methodology.

Additionally, I warned the participants of the dangers and responsibility they had when using

video with regards to privacy and the filming of sensitive topics. My warning along with the

limitations of the methodology may have influenced what the communities chose to represent

in their narratives. The assumption that the nature of the prompt given would affect the

resulting representations in the videos produced by the communities, my presence and the

31

perceived expectations of other potential viewers of the videos, such as CASA, Digital Roots

or outside donors, also influenced both the selection and the representation of themes in the

videos.

Some of the ideas underlying my analysis of the narratives include the assumption

that the amount of time dedicated to topic correlates to its relative importance for the

filmmakers. In general, I assume the following narrative events to be indications of the

presence or lack of hope, empowerment, self-efficacy or positive consciousness, though it is

possible that these elements are in fact insignificant. In summation, while this assumption is

logical, it may not be valid. I also assumed that representations and allusions to community

action indicate empowerment and self-efficacy. Similarly, I assumed that the presence of a

positive reversal in a narrative indicated hope because it shows the situation improving over

time. I assumed an acknowledgment or allusion to the need for outside donations to realize

future visions indicated limited self-efficacy but not necessarily a lack of empowerment

because the community is empowered enough to seek outside donations. I also assumed that

the identification of local resources, positive deviants and past successes indicates positive

consciousness through which the anticipatory function of representations can create hope,

empowerment and self-efficacy, thus influencing future making.

In order to check the level of subjectivity of my coding framework and to help ensure

its clarity, Erika Anderson applied my codes to the AI prompted video from Berlín to test the

inter-coder reliability of the framework. Erika identified four themes in Berlin 1: agriculture,

nature appreciation, water source and transportation. These themes match very closely with

my coding, which included two themes of agriculture and protecting the environment vs.

improving the road. While Erika chose to separate nature appreciation, water source and

transportation into separate narratives, I combined the first two under the umbrella of

32

environment, which I linked with the goal of improving the road. Because transportation is

only mentioned once and is contrasted with the goal of protecting the environment, I decided

it did not justify its own theme. While the inter coder reliability test did not produce identical

results, the codes were similar enough to support the use of my coding frame.

Results

The results of my narrative analysis consist of similarities and differences between

communities and prompts as well as some general patterns of representation and future

making. I will begin by counting and comparing the number and percentage of the videos

dedicated to different narrative topics with the aim of exposing trends and pointing out

commonalities and differences between and among the four communities and the three

prompts.

Commonalities

The main protagonists in every narrative were youth or community groups, while the

main objects of their future making were improving infrastructure in all cases, protecting the

environment for most and increasing community population in some. Poor infrastructure

always proved to be the main obstacle in achieving these goals, along with environmental

degradation, and occasionally emigration. Collective action and outside donations were the

two reoccurring strategies or helpers that were shown to have enabled past development and

were envisioned to play a role in the future. Nearly all of the narratives showed high levels

of empowerment and the majority were positive and optimistic about the future, as expressed

by statements such as “we still have a lot to do but if we all work together, we can achieve it”

33

(Los Vegas 1). Not surprisingly, given the future-oriented focus of the prompts, strong and

consistent levels of future making permeated the narratives of every community, typified by

statements such as “in my opinion, in the future Berlín will have more people, houses and

nature” (Berlín 2). An analysis of the reversals shows that all but one narrative demonstrate

optimistic future making through the presence of a positive reversal, indicating that the

communities are generally positive and hopeful about the future.

Narrative

Each of the community videos contain between one and four distinct narratives.

Comparing the percentage of each video dedicated to each storyline helps to illuminate the

representations of community and future presented in the videos. Every video shares a

similar pattern regardless of community or prompt with one exception, which I will discus

below. The communities spend the majority of their videos discussing infrastructure,

followed by the environment. In the AI and traditionally prompted videos, the third most

common theme is agriculture, while the neutrally prompted videos ignore agriculture,

focusing instead on issues of population and the future (see Table I). Every community

spends the majority of their time talking about infrastructure, indicating how important it is to

the communities past and future development. Many of the narratives about infrastructure

mention past successes, while all of them demonstrated hope for future improvements. The

environment appears in all but three of the twelve videos which I took to mean it was the

second most important topic. Similar to infrastructure, past and present actions to protect the

environment are often mentioned and nearly all of the narratives express optimism about the

future of the environment. Half of the community produced videos focused on agriculture, in

which, the AI prompted narratives present it as a resource, while the traditionally prompted

34

narratives focus on the difficulties of farming. Meanwhile, the neutrally prompted narratives

focus on youth, the future and the challenges of a declining community population. The

results presented in Table I support my hypothesis that AI prompts are more likely to result in

resource-focused responses than traditional prompts. It is also noteworthy that the AI videos

contain a balance of infrastructural, environmental and agricultural narratives; the neutral and

traditional videos are disproportionately focused on infrastructural narratives.

Table I: Percentage of Video Devoted to Four Main NarrativesPrompt Infrastructure Environment Agriculture Population OtherAI 32% 27% 27% - 14%Neutral 72% 15% - 11% 2%Traditional 66% 16% 12% - 6%

Actual vs. Future Actions

My theory suggests that the presence of self-efficacy and empowerment in the

narratives can be inferred when they make mention of successful collective action in the past

or present. An examination of narratives explicitly mentioning past or present (actual)

actions versus those purely projecting future action demonstrates that the AI prompts are the

most likely to contain actual actions, while traditionally prompted narratives are the most

likely to have future actions, again supporting my hypothesis. Narratives making no explicit

mention of action are categorized as ‘neither’ in Table II.

Table II: Narrative Action Categorized as Actual, Future or Neutral

Prompt Actual Future Neither TotalAI 8 - - 8Neutral 6 1 1 8Traditional 4 3 1 8

35

Outside Donations vs. Local Resources

My theory predicts that narratives mentioning outside donations in the past, present or

future demonstrate an acknowledgment of limited self-efficacy but not necessarily

disempowerment, because obtaining donations often requires action on the community’s part.

The number of narratives mentioning outside donations grouped by prompt shows that the AI

and neutrally prompted videos mention outside donations in just a fourth of their narratives,

while half of the traditionally promoted narratives mention outside donations (see Table III).

Similarly, the identification of local resources, positive deviants and past successes indicates

positive consciousness because it shows an acknowledgment of local resources, power and

the potential for successful collective action. Categorizing the narratives by prompt, a

comparison of the mention of local resources reveals that AI prompted videos are almost

twice as likely to mention local resources than traditionally prompted videos (see Table IV).

Table III: Number of Narratives Mentioning Outside Donations

Prompt Outside DonationsAI 2Neutral 2Traditional 4

Table IV: Number of Narratives Mentioning Local Resources

Prompt Local ResourcesAI 8Neutral 6Traditional 5

Protagonists

Here I explore the protagonists represented in the narratives as well as the obstacles,

helpers and objectives of their actants in an attempt to understand the who, what, when, why

and how of the communities’ video representations and future making. As mentioned above,

the main protagonists of the narratives are community groups and youth. Community groups,

particularly mothers’ groups, youth groups and school parent groups were often credited with

36

the building, maintaining and improving infrastructure in the past but seldom mentioned as

being potential future change agents. Youth, however, are frequently identified as the future

change agents. Occasionally, the protagonists mention the potential of community

fundraising events as a strategy for development. The importance of having community

infrastructure in order to generate funds for future development is a common theme, as

shown by this comment in La Ribera 3, “before having a football field, when we had a fair

we couldn’t have games and the football games are the community fundraising activity that

generate the most benefits” (La Ribera 3). Other than a few comments about education and

the hope for outside donations, the vision of youth improving the community in the future is

not supported by strategies to achieve the improvements desired by the community. The lack

of present strategizing can be interpreted as an empowering statement for youth,

demonstrating confidence in their ability or as an offloading of responsibility and self-

efficacy by the adults.

Many of the communities implied or explicitly stated that they hoped to use the

videos they created to attract future outside donations with statements such as, “we ask that

you please build us new school rooms for our future” (Los Reyes 1) demonstrating

empowerment. However, the issues of emigration and depopulation are not connected to any

explicit strategies for improvement, though the need for more jobs and the potential of

agriculture are mentioned in several narratives though never explicitly as a strategy for

overcoming emigration. Such is the case in Berlín 2, “we have to place our hope on the

youth because it is the youth who… are mostly leaving the community… to look for another

environment like in the United States...” (Berlín 2). This lack of strategy implies hope for the

future but shows little self-efficacy in the present.

37

Environment and Infrastructure

The objective of protecting and improving the environment seems to be in

contradiction with the community’s other objectives such as increasing population and

improving infrastructure. Several of the videos imply that the environment was damaged

through past development of infrastructure, agriculture and increasing population, as in this

description from Berlín 1, “before this was mountains and now it has been converted to

pastures for the animals” (Berlín 1). While there is no explicit acknowledgment of the

potential contradiction between the goal of improving the environment and improving

infrastructure and increasing population, the video narratives present education, reforestation

and trash cleanups as strategies for improving the environment, demonstrating positive

consciousness through comments such as, “the school is where the children go to develop, to

form values so that they can have a better vision of the future to protect the environment

which is the trees, the water and all of those things that benefit and sustain them” (Los Vegas

1). Collective action in the form of community work projects and fundraising are suggested

in conjunction with the hope of outside donations of money, materials and labour from local

governments and American NGOs as strategies or helpers for improving infrastructure; “as

you see, this is our community building, which is not the best of infrastructure but it is what

we have now since it has been hard to get government help… our short-term goal is to build a

new one, which will benefit us and allow us to fundraise to further develop the community”

(La Ribera 1). In combinations these quotes are an example of how strategies for improving

infrastructure and protecting the environment are shown to have been successful in the past

by several narratives, exemplifying the positive deviants leveraged by AI and positive

consciousness.

38

Community Comparisons

Los Reyes

All of the narratives, regardless of prompt, implicitly or explicitly rely on outside

donations as their main or only strategy for improving their infrastructure, the exclusive topic

in this community’s videos. Statements such as “please come and fix our sinks, if you will

do us the favour” (Los Reyes 1) and “we need a project or we want a project to enlarge [the

clinic]” (Los Reyes 2) indicate a reliance on outside donations. Also of interest is that the

three narratives from Los Reyes show opposite levels of empowerment from those predicted

by my hypothesis. The AI prompted video contains several explicit requests for outside

donations while making no mention of the community’s ability to improve their infrastructure

on their own. This trend is also present in the neutral and traditional prompts, though not to

the same degree. A possible explanation for this result is the age demographics of the groups

in Los Reyes; the AI group consisted exclusively of youth aged eight to twelve, while both of

the other groups had at least one adult participant each. It is possible that the adults tempered

the desire for outside help and influenced the inclusion of local potential for collective action,

suggesting that participants’ age may also be an important factor in the resulting levels of

self-efficacy and empowerment.

La Ribera

All the videos produced by the youth of La Ribera includ at least one narrative about

infrastructure, but unlike Los Reyes, the AI and neutrally prompted videos also includ

narratives about the environment. This result is in line with my hypothesis, which predicts

the presence of fewer positive themes and local resources — in this case narratives about the

39

environment — in the traditionally prompted videos than in those prompted neutrally or

positively with AI.

All three of the videos from La Ribera mention positive deviants or past success at

improving community infrastructure. Additionally, all of the groups in La Ribera highlight

the importance of infrastructure for the purpose of fundraising – a comment rarely made in

any other community’s videos. This is visible in statements such as “this kitchen was built

by a group of Americans who came here to help us and now it is very helpful… in the future,

we want to enlarge it to earn more money to build more community projects” (La Ribera 2)

and “the community building is a priority for the community to have activities to develop the

town, which still needs a lot… to have bingos and fundraise for the school, to have our party,

the parties of our friends and the parties of our families, to fundraise and have activities like

dances” (La Ribera 3).

The videos from La Ribera mention past donations from American NGOs and

envision future help from outside donors with comments such as, “we hope to get

government help… to achieve a better future” (La Ribera 2), demonstrating limited levels of

self-efficacy but not necessarily empowerment or hope. Their apparent confidence about

receiving future donations demonstrates hope and hints at empowerment because presumably

the community would need power to obtain such a donation.

Los Vegas

All three of Los Vegas’ videos mention the environment as a resource and most of the

videos mention present actions to help protect it. The AI and neutrally prompted videos

include narratives about youth and the future, while the traditional video focuses on the

difficulties of fish farming with the comment, “it is not possible to maintain the production of

40

tilapia because of the lack of economic resources” (Los Vegas 3). These first two videos

focus on the hard work and infrastructural achievements of the community founders,

something unique among the videos, while the third only talk about the need to improve the

infrastructure. This observation corresponds with my hypothesis that AI, neutral and

traditionally prompted narratives will contain decreasing levels of empowerment and self-

efficacy. Statements such as “thanks to their [community founders] work, we have the

community we have today… this… progress that has been achieved over the past 50 years

has been very hard, building houses, the church and the school… it has been the work of all

of the families who have worked in collaboration to achieve it” (Los Vegas 1) demonstrate a

recognition of past successes and collective action. The AI video from Los Vegas contains

the most in-depth articulation of a plan to protract and improve the environment of any video,

focusing on the importance of present and future education, reforestation and trash cleanups.

The neutrally prompted video from Los Vegas contains the following vision for the future,

“our youth have a future vision with all of the technological advances while the adults want

to maintain our culture of hardworking, conservative, humble people and the environment

without leaving behind the development of the community” (Los Vegas 2), which shows the

perceived difference between the goals of the adults and the youth, whereas the other videos

articulate a cohesive and singular future vision. This statement is the only explicit mention of

preserving the local culture and way of life, although such action is implied by one other

video.

41

Berlín

All three of the videos from Berlín contain narratives about agriculture and youth.

The neutral and negatively prompted videos focus on the problem of decreasing community

population due to high levels of youth emigration. Statements such as “I think that things are

good but the community still lacks many things to develop more and… I think that we all

need to work, you, us, the adults, and those who are coming up [the youth]… that tomorrow

you remember who worked, how we worked and… make more of it” (Berlín 3) show a desire

to use past collective action as an example to inspire more in the future.

All three videos show a connection between the people and the environment,

suggesting an inherent value of the latter, “the people try to live comfortably, while always

respecting Mother Nature… the people are conscious of the importance of maintaining the

nature resource in a good state so they can live better” (Berlín 1). This statement implies a

community wide level of positive consciousness in relation to the environment.

Discussion

In this section I will attempt to explain the aforementioned findings by linking them

back to my theoretical framework of positive consciousness based upon the theories of social

representations, critical consciousness, AI and extended language. I have divided the

discussion into three sections: general trends, differences between the prompts and

differences between the communities. After discussing my findings, I will turn my attention

to the limitations of my research and the potential for future research.

42

General Trends

The Omnipresence of Hope

The consistently high level of hope permeating the narratives surprised me. I had

expected the difference in prompts to have had a greater effect on the levels of hope and

future making present in the videos. While I expected the future orientation of the prompts to

result in some future making in the videos, I did not expect them to be universally positive

and optimistic about the future. This high level of optimism was particularly surprising

because it was rarely accompanied by explicitly articulated strategies for realizing the future

improvements in infrastructure, environment and population that the communities hoped for

and expected. Therefore, the hypothesized link between prompt and hope was not supported

by my findings since the levels of hope were high in all of the videos regardless of

community or prompt. However, because the communities’ hope is not accompanied by

strategies for implementation, hope may be affecting the communities negatively, whereas a

lack of hope might demand planned action. Supposing it is positive, hope’s omnipresence

may have been due to the fact that all of the community youth are currently involved in

community improvement projects with CASA.

I was also surprised that the narratives did not focus more on altering and adapting

current practices in order to improve the future or mention more than once the need to

maintain and preserve cultural norms. Both of these unexpected results provide further

evidence that the communities are generally positive and optimistic about the future and

therefore don’t feel the need to change things or to take action to preserve their culture.

43

The Focus on Youth

The focus on youth and community groups as the main protagonists of the narratives

suggests a balance of hope and self-efficacy. The youth are referred to with hope and

represented as the future potential for improvement and as a continuation of past and present

successes. Mentioning the past and present actions of community groups shows an

acknowledgment of self-efficacy by the communities in the present. Youth groups are often

accredited with past successes, demonstrating self-efficacy and empowerment in the past and

present as well as in the future. All of the collective actions taken by adult community

groups are closely related to youth, consisting of parents groups, school improvements, sports

and dance fundraisers, all of which are youth focused.

Differences Between Prompts

Link Between Positivity and Strategies for Collective Action

Collective action by youth or community groups and obtaining outside donations of

money, supplies and labour from the government or American NGOs are the two main

strategies articulated by the communities for realizing infrastructural improvement. Many of

the narratives, particularly those resulting from AI prompts, mention how these strategies for

improvement had been successful in the past. The fact that no change or alteration to these

previously successful strategies is articulated in the videos suggests that the communities feel

their past and current efforts are sufficient to achieve their future vision, implying

empowerment and self-efficacy. In other words, it is merely a matter of time before they will

achieve their goals. More than any other, the goal of improving infrastructure is most closely

linked to limited community self-efficacy through the narrative focus on outside donations.

44

The challenge of emigration and the related goal of increasing population mentioned

by several communities did not include any strategies for improvement; one video mentions

the need to create jobs in the community while the rest merely allude to the need to stop the

youth from emigrating. Narratives about the environment demonstrate the highest level of

self-efficacy and strategy; past and present education, reforestation and clean up projects are

mentioned in several narratives have been successful in the past and are not accompanied by

any mention of the need for outside resources. The contrast between the negative, strategy-

less narratives about emigration and the clear self-efficacy and action plan attached to the

environmental narratives, demonstrates the effect of positivity.

Link Between Resources, Past Successes and Self-efficacy

The hypothesized link between narratives presenting past successes or local resources

and those with high levels of self-efficacy is supported by the frequent mention of the

environment as a resource in the videos as compared to narratives focused on infrastructure,

which is typically presented as a problem and those addressing emigration, which is always

mentioned negatively. Together with the tendency of environmental narratives to mention

past and present community actions, infrastructural narratives to mention past and future

outside donations and population focused narratives to present only hope, the link between

positive consciousness and self-efficacy becomes visible. The frequency of narratives

mentioning outside donations also lends weight to my hypothesis. Narratives about the

environment demonstrate self-efficacy by referencing local resources as well as past and

present successes, while infrastructural narratives make no mention of resources and contain

no present action. Additionally, the completely negative narratives about emigration make no

mention of resources, past or present actions and contain only hope for the future. The AI

45

prompted videos contain more examples of past successes and local resources than the

neutral or traditionally prompted videos, further supporting the theoretical argument that

focusing on past accomplishments and resources produces more hope, empowerment and

self-efficacy than focusing on failures, limitations or needs.

Differences Between Communities

The trend of Los Reyes, the most developed, urban and prosperous of the

communities, to focus on infrastructure and their lack of self-efficacy demonstrated by their

fixation on outside donations matches with the theories of critical consciousness, positive

consciousness and AI, which suggest that the high levels of individualism and lack of

community, frequently associated with urbanization and capitalization, will result in lower

levels of empowerment, collective action and self-efficacy, which in turn results in

paternalism and dependency on outside aid. While it is also possible that the aforementioned

young age of the AI group in Los Reyes may have affected the levels of self-efficacy and

empowerment in the AI prompted video, the trend extends beyond this oddly structured AI

group, thereby implying the need for an alternative explanation for this result, that the urban

nature of the community results in a lower levels of self-efficacy than are present in the other

three communities, which are more rural.

Two of the three videos from Los Vegas and one of the videos from Berlín contain

interviews and references to the community founders and their past infrastructural and

population-increasing accomplishments, of which the Los Vegas videos show the most

consistent level of empowerment and self-efficacy, suggesting the possibility of a correlation

between the focus on history and past success and current levels of self-efficacy and

empowerment as hypothesized by the theories of AI and positive consciousness. Similarly,

46

the Los Vegas narratives contain the only explicit references to the need for youth to learn

about and preserve local culture. Additionally, perhaps coincidentally but mirroring the

predictions of my theory, the AI video from Los Vegas contains the most coherent

articulation of a plan to protect and improve the environment of any video, focusing on the

importance of present and future education, reforestation and trash cleanups, suggesting a

link between positive consciousness and self-efficacy.

The fact that many of the communities explicitly and implicitly mention using the

videos as a tool to obtain outside donations indicates that at least some of the goals of my

PAR project were met. The communities seemed to recognize the potential of the videos for

improving their ability to communicate, matching with the theory of extended language. The

high level of participation, seemingly universal enjoyment and praise for the videos by the

communities indicate that the extended language video methodology was enjoyable for the

participants, an important factor for sustainability. Both the youth and adults seemed to take

pride in having filmed and edited the videos themselves, and several mentioned the potential

of their newfound skills to improve their chances of future employment. The participants

eagerly shared their videos with their fellow community members, who expressed excitement

about watching them. Several of the youth expressed that when they were on camera or

filming they were listened to and respected in a way that was possible without the camera,

supporting the empowerment aspect of the theory of extended language.

Limitations and Options for Future Research

One of the major limitations of my research is that while my theory and hypothesis

predict the superiority of AI and extended language methodologies over traditional needs-

47

based development techniques at promoting self-efficacy, empowerment and hope, the design

of my data collection only tested the implications of AI on video representations about

community and future in four communities. Not only is this a very limited and short-term

sample, but because an extended language participatory video methodology was used in all of

my groups, the research design probes just the AI aspect of my hypothesis. I think that

conducting original fieldwork investigating a new combination of theories and methodologies

for an MSc dissertation, while an ambitious undertaking, did not allow me to adequately

explore the complexities of my hypothesis. Future research is needed to further explore the

implications and apparent benefits of AI, extended language and the combination of the two.

In addition to further probing of the two theories and their interaction, the

methodologies should be applied in a wider variety of contexts, to more diverse populations

and for a longer period of time. The theories themselves suggest that a longer-term

implementation may result in stronger, more conclusive findings. It would be interesting to

test the methodologies against a control group not only using traditional prompts but also

using a traditional restricted language methodology. As the anomaly in the level of self-

efficacy present in the Los Reyes videos highlights, an exploration of the effects of age on

empowerment and self-efficacy should be investigated further. The Los Reyes videos also

allude to the potentially important differences between rural and urban communities. I

believe that my research can be used best as a pilot study, indicating the need for further

research into the potential of AI and extended language methodologies to encourage self-

efficacy, empowerment and hope among participants. In other words, the results that I have

presented above should be understood as primary results serving to illuminate a potentially

interesting area for further, better-funded, longer-term research.

48

Conclusion

The theories of AI and extended language suggest that these methodologies, both

independently and, to a greater degree, in conjunction, are better able to foster empowerment,

self-efficacy and hope than traditional needs-based restricted language methodologies. The

methodologies prepare participants and facilitators for successful dialogue by developing

positive consciousness and increasing their ability to communicate, thus more closely

approximating Habermas’ ideal public sphere. Positive consciousness is similar to Freire’s

critical consciousness but positively focused on resources and past successes rather than

limitations, obstacles or past failures. The unconditionally positive nature of AI works by

altering the social context and thereby changing the knowledge and representations produced

therein. AI leverages the anticipatory function of representations, drawing on past and

current successes and positive deviants to influence future making. By focusing on resources

and realized actions, AI encourages self-efficacy, empowerment and hope while traditional,

critically-focused methodologies highlight limitations, failures and needs, which can be

discouraging, disempowering and overwhelming.

Extended language encourages confident, credible and far-reaching communication

by allowing participants to escape the structural, grammatical and epistemological limitations

of the words used by restricted language through the use of multimedia. The freedom and

creativity of extended language help bring to light assumptions and unleash hidden resources,

often illuminating new alternatives for decision makers. The communicability and credibility

of video combine with the power and authority of the camera to give communities a strong

and believable voice in a fun and creative way which community members are likely to

continue into the future because they enjoy the process, thereby ensuring sustainability.

49

My research findings, though limited in scope, support my hypothesis that AI is better

able to encourage self-efficacy and empowerment in participants than traditional critically

focused methodologies. My research also suggests that extended language participatory

video is an enjoyable and productive medium through which community members can

communicate with themselves and others about their representations of community and

future. While all of the videos show high levels of hope for the future, those prompted with

AI methodologies most often showed self-efficacy and empowerment by presenting past

successes. Similarly, my hypothesis is supported by the findings that the AI prompted videos

focused the least on outside donations and made the most mention of local resources, again

suggesting the ability of AI to prompt self-efficacy. My findings also suggest that other

factors such as the age of the participants and the location of the community also have an

effect on the levels of self-efficacy and empowerment. Thus while there is evidence

supporting the ability of AI to promote empowerment and self-efficacy, further research

should be conducted to explore the complexities of these two interesting and potentially

beneficial methodologies.

50

Bibliography

Attride-Stirling, J. (2001) Thematic networks: an analytic tool for qualitative research Qualitative Research London: Sage

Bruner, J. (1998) Acts of meaning Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Chávez, V., Israel, B., Allen, A., DeCarlo, M., Lichtenstein, R., Schulz, A., Bayer, I. & McGranaghan, R. (2004) A Bridge between Communities: Video-Making Using Principles of Community-Based Participatory Research Health Promotion Practice, Vol. 5 London: Sage

Chapagai, C. (2000) Appreciative Planning and Action: A Trainer's Guidebook Martadi, Bajura, Nepal: CARE Nepal

Farr, R. & Anderson, T. Hewstone, M (Ed.) (1983) Beyond actor-observer differences in perspective: extensions and applications. Attribution Theory: Social and Functional Extensions Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Farr, R. & Moscovici, S. (Eds.) (1984) Social representations Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Field, Andy (2000) Discovering Statistics using SPSS for Windows London: Sage

Finegold M., Holland B. & Lingham T. (2002) Appreciative Inquiry and Public Dialogue: An Approach to Community Change Public Organization Review, Vol. 2 Boston, MA: Springer

Franzosi, Roberto (1998) Narrative Analysis – or Why (and How) Sociologists Should be Interested in Narrative Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24

Freire, Paulo (1973) Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.

Fordham, F. (1966) An Introduction to Jung’s Psychology 3rd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books

Humphreys P. and Brézillon P. (2002) Combining rich and restricted languages in multimedia: Enrichment of context for innovative decision Decision-making and decision support in the Internet age. Cork: Oaktree Press

Jovchelovitch, S. (2003) Re-thinking the diversity of knowledge: Cognitive polyphasia, belief and representation Représentations et croyances (5) Revue semestrielle

Jovchelovitch, S. (2006) Knowledge in context: representations, community, and culture New York, NY: Routledge

51

Mathie, A. (2002) From Clients to Citizens: Asset-Based Community Development as a Strategy For Community-Driven Development Gord Cunningham, MA: St. Francis Xavier University

Rose, D. (2000) Analysis of Moving Images in Bauer, M. & Gaskell, G. (Eds.) Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical handbook London: Sage

Skeldon, R. (2002) Migration and Poverty Asia-Pacific Population Journal New York: UNESCA

52

Appendixes

Appendix I: Video Prompts

Group 1 Negative (Traditional) PromptEnglish Record a video showing the best of your community and explain the best

thing your community has done that you would like to do again in the future.

Spanish Grabar un video mostrando lo mejor de su comunidad y explicar la mejor cosa que han realizado como comunidad que les gustaría hacer de nuevo.

Group 2 Neutral PromptEnglish Record a video showing your community and something that you would

like to do as a community in the future.Spanish Grabar un video mostrando su comunidad y algo que les gustaría hacer

como comunidad en el futuro.Group 3 Positive (Applicative Inquiry) PromptEnglish Record a video showing the problems of your community and a project that

you would like to do as a community to improve the community.Spanish Grabar un video mostrando las problemas de su comunidad y algo que les

gustaría hacer como comunidad para mejor su comunidad.

Appendix II: Community List and Project Dates

Community Project DatesLos Vegas 25 March 2007La Ribera 27 – 28 March 2007Los Reyes 29 – 30 March 2007Berlín 1 April 2007

i

Appendix III: Example Participation Form

ii

iii

Appendix IV: Coding Frame

Who & Why: Characters & ActantsProtagonistDefinition: The main actor of the narrative, who takes action, changes or evolvesExample: A mothers groupObstacleDefinition: Something that impedes progress or achievement of the objectiveExample: Poor road (impedes community development)HelperDefinition: Something that supports or enables the achievement of the objectiveExample: NGO donation of money to help build a schoolObjectiveDefinition: The goal or desired outcome of the protagonistExample: Repairing the schoolWhat, When & How: Action, Sequence, & ReversalActionDefinition: The movement or action necessary to achieve the objectiveExample: Fundraising to earn money to repair a schoolSequenceDefinition: The time frame of the action and objective (past, present or future)Example: We hope to build a new school = futureReversalDefinition: The change that takes place in the narrative (the situation improves or worsens)Example: We hope to build a better road = positive reversal (things improve)

Appendix V: Coded Narratives

Table I: Los Vegas 1 – Positive (AI) PromptYouth learn values in school now in order to protect the environment and improve the community in the future.

36%

The community understands the importance of the environment and has reforested and keeps trash out of the river.

25%

The community worked together in the past to build infrastructure and is currently working for the environment.

30%

Other 9%

iv

Chart 1: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Vegas in Response to AI Prompt.

Table II: Los Vegas 1 - Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-4 4:06 36% Youth, Future & EnvironmentWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist YouthObstacles & Helpers

School (helper)Ignorance (obstacle)

Object Learning values in school, protecting environment, improving community

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Learning values in school (present) = protecting environment + improving community (future) [bad to good]

Summary Youth learn values in school now in order to protect the environment and improve the community in the future.

Table III: Los Vegas 1 - Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme5-11, 13 2:50 25% Past & Present Environmental ProtectionWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community (adults)Obstacles & Helpers

Deforestation, trash (obstacles)

Object Health environmentWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Understanding the importance of the environment (past & present) = reforestation (past) + keeping trash out of the river (present) [bad to good]

Summary The community understands the importance of the environment and has reforested and keeps trash out of the river.

Table IV: Los Vegas 1 – Theme 3Scenes Length Percentage Theme12, 14, 17, 18 3:24 30% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist CommunityObstacles & Helpers

Lack of infrastructure, environmental damage (obstacles) Collective action (helper)

Object Building infrastructure, protecting environmentWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Collective building roads, houses, school church (past) + environmental projects (present) = better community[bad to good]

Summary The community worked together in the past to build infrastructure and is currently working for the environment.

v

Table V: Los Vegas 2 – Neutral PromptThe founders of the community had to work hard and suffer in order to build the current infrastructure.

83%

The youth hope for technological development while the adults want to maintain the culture in the future.

16%

Other 1%

Chart 2: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Vegas in Response to Neutral Prompt.

Table VI: Los Vegas 2 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-7 5:40 83% History & InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community foundersObstacles & Helpers

Lack of infrastructure (obstacle)

Object Build infrastructure, create a better lifeWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Founding the community + building infrastructure + pre-Columbian ruins (past) + school, church (present) = improved community[bad - good]

Summary The founders of the community had to work hard and suffer in order to build the current infrastructure.

Table VII: Los Vegas 2 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme7, 8 1:07 16% Future visionWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Adults, youthObstacles & Helpers

Maintaining culture, technological development

Object Maintaining culture, technological developmentWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Maintaining culture + technological development (future) = better future[good to better]

Summary The youth hope for technological development while the adults want to maintain the culture in the future.

vi

Table VIII: Los Vegas 3 – Negative (Traditional) PromptThe community has mountains, trees, animals and a river. 41%In the future the community plans to improve their road and bridges. 11%People want to start farming fish but it has become too expensive and current fish farmers are struggling.

48%

Chart 3: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Vegas in Response to Traditional Prompt.

Table IX: Los Vegas 3 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-6 3:25 41% EnvironmentWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Nature / environmentObstacles & Helpers

-

Object -What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Natural resources (present)[good]

Summary The community has mountains, trees, animals and a river.

Table X: Los Vegas 3 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme7-10 0:55 11% Future infrastructure projectsWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist The communityObstacles & HelpersObject to improve the road and bridges

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Gravel road, poor bridges (present) + improvement projects = better roads (future)[bad to good]

Summary In the future the community plans to improve their road and bridges.

Table XI: Los Vegas 3 – Theme 3Scenes Length Percentage Theme11, 12 3:58 48% Agricultural DifficultiesWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Fish farmersObstacles & Helpers

High prices of fish and fish food (obstacles)

Object Teach more people how to profitably farm fishWhat, When & How Fish farm is difficult and too expensive, people want to start to farm

vii

Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

fish but it is too expensive (present) = less fish farming (future)[bad to good]

Summary People want to start farming fish but it has become too expensive and current fish farmers are struggling.

Table XII: Berlín 1 – Positive (AI) Prompt

Farmers raise crops and animals in order to grow food, create jobs, earn money from exporting crops and keep cultural traditions alive.

80%

People are becoming conscious of the importance of protecting the environment and the benefits they get from nature but also need to improve the road to improve access to the community.

14%

Other 6%

Chart 4: Percentage of Film by Theme in Berlín in Response to AI Prompt.

Table XIII: Berlín 1 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-26 10:18 80% AgricultureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist FarmersObstacles & Helpers

Nature, drought (obstacles)

Object Grow food, create jobs and export cropsWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Farmers grow crops and raise animals to grow food = create jobs and export crops (present).[good to better]

Summary Farmers raise crops and animals in order to grow food, create jobs, earn money from exporting crops and keep cultural traditions alive.

Table XIV: Berlín 1 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme27-32 1:45 14% Protecting environment vs. improving roadWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community, nature, roadObstacles & Helpers

Poor transportation infrastructure, need to protect the environment (obstacles)

Object Protecting the environment & improving the roadWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Nature provides people with beauty, enjoyment, water and food (present) + community become conscious and needs to protect the environment while also improving the road = better future (future).[good to better]

Summary People are becoming conscious of the importance of protecting the

viii

environment and the benefits they get from nature but also need to improve the road to improve access to the community.

Table XV: Berlín 2 – Neutral PromptThe community founders worked to develop the communities’ infrastructure. 45%In the past the community’s population increased, now due to emigration and subsistence agriculture being the only economic activity the population is rapidly decreasing and the community is hoping that youth will stop emigrating.

26%

Nature provides beauty and enjoyment to the community. 22%Other 7%

Chart 5: Percentage of Film by Theme in Berlín in Response to Neutral Prompt.

Table XVI: Berlín 2 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1, 2, 4, 7, 10-13

3:44 45% History & Infrastructure

Who & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community foundersObstacles & Helpers

Lack of infrastructure (obstacle)

Object Develop community infrastructureWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

The community founders worked to develop the communities’ infrastructure (past).[bad to good]

Summary The community founders worked to develop the communities’ infrastructure.

Table XVII: Berlín 2 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme1, 20-23, 25, 26

2:05 26% Emigration, Agriculture & Future

Who & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist youthObstacles & Helpers

Emigration, lack of jobs, shrinking population (obstacles)

Object Stop youth from leaving, increase populationWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

The population increased (past), due to emigration of youth the population is decreasing, the only economic activity is subsistence agriculture (present) = hope that emigration will stop (future)[good to bad]

Summary In the past the community’s population increased, now due to

ix

emigration and subsistence agriculture being the only economic activity the population is rapidly decreasing and the community is hoping that youth will stop emigrating.

Table XVIII: Berlín 2 – Theme 3Scenes Length Percentage Theme3, 5, 8, 9, 14-17, 24, 27

1:51 22% Environment

Who & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Nature & petsObstacles & HelpersObject Nature providing beauty

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Nature provides beauty and enjoyment to the community (present)[good to better]

Summary Nature provides beauty and enjoyment to the community.

Table XIX: Berlín 3 – Negative (Traditional) Prompt

The poor infrastructure was improved through the work of community groups and outside donations and there is hope for future outside donations for further improvements.

56%

The communities’ current agriculture and environment. 21%Children are the future of the community. 4%Other 19%

Chart 6: Percentage of Film by Theme in Berlín in Response to Traditional Prompt.

Table XX: Berlín 3 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-7, 10, 19-25, 35-40, 42-45

7:45 56% Infrastructure

Who & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community groups, outside donorsObstacles & Helpers

Poor quality infrastructure (obstacle), outside donations (helpers)

Object Improve infrastructureWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Poor infrastructure was improved by community groups & outside donation (past) = better infrastructure + hope for future outside donation (future)[bad to good]

Summary The poor infrastructure was improved through the work of community groups and outside donations and there is hope for future outside

x

donations for further improvements.

Table XXI: Berlín 3 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme8, 9, 11, 12-15, 26-29, 35

2:59 21% Agriculture & Environment

Who & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Nature, farmersObstacles & HelpersObject

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Community environment & agriculture (present)

Summary The communities’ current agriculture and environment.

Table XXII: Berlín 3 – Theme 3Scenes Length Percentage Theme16-18 0:35 4% Children & FutureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist childrenObstacles & HelpersObject

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Children (present), are the future

Summary Children are the future of the community.

Table XXIII: La Ribera 1 – Positive (AI) Prompt

Infrastructure has been developed though community work and outside donations and there is hope for more donations and further development.

68%

The community has reforested and cleaned up the river for the future. 6%Other 26%

Chart 7: Percentage of Film by Theme in La Ribera in Response to AI Prompt.

Table XXIV: La Ribera 1 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1, 2, 5-9 3:24 68% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community, outside donorsObstacles & Helpers

Poor infrastructure (obstacle), Outside donations (helpers)

xi

Object Improved infrastructure, outside donationsWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Poor infrastructure was improved by community groups & outside donation (past) = better infrastructure + hope for future outside donation (future) [bad to good to better]

Summary Infrastructure has been developed though community work and outside donations and there is hope for more donations and further development.

Table XXV: La Ribera 1 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme3, 4, 10, 11 0:19 6% Environmental ProtectionWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist communityObstacles & HelpersObject Protecting the environment

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Reforestation + river clean up (past) = better future[bad to good]

Summary The community has reforested and cleaned up the river for the future.

Table XXVI: La Ribera 2 – Neutral PromptThe community is concerned with protecting the environment and has cleaned up trash and hopes to conduct other activities for the future.

37%

The community has improved their infrastructure with the help of outside donors and hope to receive future donations.

63%

Chart 8: Percentage of Film by Theme in La Ribera in Response to Neutral Prompt.

Table XXVII: La Ribera 2 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1, 2, 7, 8, 14 1:39 37% EnvironmentWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist CommunityObstacles & Helpers

Trash (obstacle)

Object Protecting the environmentWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Community trash pick up = clean river (past) + for the future[bad to good]

Summary The community is concerned with protecting the environment and has cleaned up trash and hopes to conduct other activities for the future.

xii

Table XXVIII: La Ribera 2 – Theme 2Scenes Length Percentage Theme3-6, 9-13, 15 2:43 63% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community, outside donorObstacles & Helpers

Outside donations (helpers)

Object Improve infrastructure, future donationsWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Outside donation + infrastructure projects (past) = hope for future outside donations (future)[bad to good]

Summary The community has improved their infrastructure with the help of outside donors and hope to receive future donations.

Table XXIV: La Ribera 3 – Negative (Traditional) PromptThrough the work of the youth group with the help of outside donations the community was able to build infrastructure witch it hopes to sue together with future donations to continue to improve the infrastructure.

100%

Chart 9: Percentage of Film by Theme in La Ribera in Response to Traditional Prompt.

Table XXV: La Ribera 3 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-14 6:00 100% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community youth, outside donorsObstacles & Helpers

Outside donations, youth group (helpers), lack of infrastructure (obstacle)

Object Raise money, improve infrastructureWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Not infrastructure + youth group (past) = infrastructure (present) & hope for more donations and more infrastructure (future)[bad to good to better]

Summary Through the work of the youth group with the help of outside donations the community was able to build infrastructure witch it hopes to sue together with future donations to continue to improve the infrastructure.

Table XXVI: Los Reyes 1 – Positive (AI) PromptWith the help of outside donations the community has improved its infrastructure and hit hopes for future donations.

100%

xiii

Chart 10: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Reyes in Response to AI Prompt.

Table XXVII: Los Reyes 1 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-11 4:09 100% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist Community & outside donorsObstacles & Helpers

Poor infrastructure (obstacle), outside donations (helpers)

Object Improved infrastructure, outside donationsWhat, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Poor infrastructure + outside donations(past) = improved infrastructure (present) & hope for more donations (future)[Bad to good to better]

Summary With the help of outside donations the community has improved its infrastructure and hit hopes for future donations.

Table XXVIII: Los Reyes 2 – Neutral PromptThe community has poor infrastructure, which hit hopes to improve through future projects.

100%

Chart 11: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Reyes in Response to Neutral Prompt.

Table XXIX: Los Reyes 2– Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-7 3:22 100% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist CommunityObstacles & Helpers

Suggested outside donations (helper)

Object Improved infrastructure & suggestion of outside donations

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Poor infrastructure (present + projects = improved infrastructure (future)[bad to good]

xiv

Summary The community has poor infrastructure, which hit hopes to improve through future projects.

Table XXX: Los Reyes 3 – Negative (Traditional) PromptThe community has poor infrastructure, which hit hopes to improve through future projects.

100%

Chart 12: Percentage of Film by Theme in Los Reyes in Response to Traditional Prompt.

Table XXX: Los Reyes 3 – Theme 1Scenes Length Percentage Theme1-10 2:16 100% InfrastructureWho & Why(Characters & Actants)

Protagonist CommunityObstacles & HelpersObject Improved infrastructure

What, When & How Action, (Sequence), [Reversal]

Poor infrastructure (present) + future projects = improved infrastructure (future)[bad to good]

Summary The community has poor infrastructure, which hit hopes to improve through future projects.

xv

Percentages by Prompt

Chart 13: Percentage of Films by Theme in Response to AI Prompt.

Chart 14: Percentage of Films by Theme in Response to Neutral Prompt.

Chart 15: Percentage of Films by Theme in Response to Traditional Prompt.

xvi

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

Appendix VI: English Coded Transcription, Audio and Visual Summary

La Ribera 2 – Neutral PromptTime Transcription Scene Description Image

Title: La Ribera Our RiverShot: 1

0:00 – 0:34

YouthThis is our community river where we go to enjoy ourselves. In the future we hope it hill not be polluted. We also hope to install many trashcans so that it can stay an enjoyable place for everyone.

VideoMedium circular pan from calm river to girl speaking to trash bags hanging from a tree on the riverbank.

AudioNarration from in front of camera with Chariots of Fire theme music begins.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 2

0:35 – 1:06

Youth 2We want to enjoy our source of water and keep it clean.

VideoMedium circular pan from calm river, to bushes, to trash bag, to on bank to youth narrating. Pan in opposite direction from above.

AudioNarration from in front of camera, music fades out before narration.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 3

1:07 -

Youth 3This kitchen was built by a group of Americans (laughing) who visited to

VideoClose shot of community kitchen sign, pan to side where youth is standing, he

xvii

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

1:31 help us. And now it is of great utility. narrates.

AudioNarration in front of camera, no music.

Shot: 4

1:32 – 1:39

Youth 3In the future, we hope to expand it to earn future monies so that we can build more community projects.

VideoCut to youth sitting by a stack of cement blocks in front of community kitchen.

AudioNarration in front of camera, no music.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 5

1:40 – 1:56

Youth 4Before we had to walk, now we have a bus to go to high school.

VideoMedium shot of front of bus, pan to side, narrator steps out of bus.

AudioNarration in front of camera, no music.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

xviii

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

Shot: 6

1:57 – 2:07

Youth 4In the future there will be more students. Therefore we need a larger bus to take us to school.

VideoMedium shot inside the bus of the narrator standing in the back.

AudioNarration in front of camera, no music.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 7

2:08 – 2:23

Youth 1The trees are very important living beings. They give us water, air, fruit and endemic beauty. We care for them and protect our natural resources to have a better future for future generations.

VideoMedium shot of wood sign under a red tile roof.

AudioNarrator reads the sign from behind the camera, Chariots of Fire theme music fades in, louder than before.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 8

2:24 – 2:31

Youth 1This is an example of what we want to have in our future.

VideoClose shot of the narrator standing by the sign.

AudioNarration in front of camera, music continues.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

xix

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

Shot: 9

2:32 – 2:53

Youth 3Here is where we have our dance.

Youth 4And we also have activities to develop our community.

VideoMedium shot of rustic community building, camera walked up to a close up of two narrators.

AudioNarration in front of camera, music continues.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 10

2:54 – 2:59

Youth 2This is our community building.

VideoMedium shot of community building.

AudioNarration from behind camera, music continues.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 11

3:00 – 3:15

Youth 3In the future we hope to build a new community building in La Ribera.

VideoMedium shot of youth standing in dirt field, pan to show future construction site.

AudioNarration in front of camera, music continues.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

xx

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

Shot: 12

3:16 – 3:32

Youth 1This is the place (cow moos) where we play football.

VideoMedium pan of dry dirt football field, pan to narrator.

AudioAs above.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 13

3:33 – 3:55

Youth 2In the future we hope to plant grass.

VideoMedium shot of two youth, pan to show dry football field.

AudioAs above.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Shot: 14

3:56 – 4:06

Youth 3In our community many people have these animals for their economic wellbeing.

VideoMedium shot of a herd of cows behind a fence.AudioNarration from behind camera. QuickTime™ and a

Photo - JPEG decompressorare needed to see this picture.

xxi

Colour CodesEmpowerment Hope Future Making all three (positive) Disempowerment Hopeless Fatalism All three (negative)

Shot: 15

3:56 – 4:16

Youth 1We hope to get help from the government…

Youth 2… to achieve a better future.

VideoClose shot of two youth sitting cross-legged on field.

AudioNarration from in front of camera.

QuickTime™ and aPhoto - JPEG decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

4:17 – 4:40 Credits – 4 youth participants

xxii