This article reflects on methodological decisions, strategies, and challenges from a recent interdisciplinary project on the relationship between “British values” and Islam. The project employed digital storytelling to access “everyday” conceptions and constructions of this contentious relationship. The research was undertaken by participant researchers recruited from Muslim communities in the UK’s East Anglia region, working with academics from media studies and political science. In this article, we offer a detailed account of key moments relating especially to recruitment, retention, and the production of digital content. It offers two contributions. First, methodological guidance for researchers interested in combining participatory research with digital storytelling. And second, rationale for so doing given the methodology’s scope for producing rich visual content with capacity (i) to deepen and disrupt established knowledge and (ii) to change the views, ideas, and aspirations of those involved in the content’s creation.
Growing Up Married is a 27-minute documentary that focuses on the stories of four child brides from Turkey, recollecting their memories as adults. I started this project with a desire to give voice to women's stories that were discursively silenced, and with the aim of drawing attention to the significance of activism in feminist media research. In this article, I provide a critical reflection on the process of making this documentary while exploring the ways in which women articulate their experiences of being child brides and being forced into marriage. I argue that women speaking out about these experiences not only reveal issues around forced marriage, but, more significantly, shed light on stories of domestic violence, sexual abuse as well as child abuse. They also highlight the ways in which the concept of 'honour' is perceived within the social and cultural contexts of Turkey. Indeed, they reveal clearly the ways in which a cultural obsession with family 'honour' and women's chastity are produced and reinforced. I employ discourse analysis to examine the patterns that emerge within the film's subjects' stories. I also use critical analysis to reflect on the filmmaking process as this offers an exploration of the intractable nature of the topic while revealing the complexities around making feminist media.According to the UNICEF report Ending Child Marriage: Progress and Prospects (2013), there are 700 million women who were married as children, and 280 million girls are at risk of becoming child brides. According to CARE 'almost 39,000 girls become child brides every single day, often married to much older men ' (care.org, 2018). In Turkey, the reports written by the Turkish Population Research (cited in Hurriyet, 2015) reveal that 1 in 3 marriages involves a girl under the age of 18. 1The figures here are alarming and signal the need for further and urgent research in the field. I wanted to explore the effects of child and forced marriage while making women's experiences visible and audible, in an attempt to contribute to and advance debates around this significant, complex and It is important here to disclose my position as a scholar and filmmaker in contextualising the documentary's aims and the rationale behind it. I am a UK-based and trained feminist media scholar. I am originally from Turkey, engaging for the first time, in media production. This positionality is significant because I am not only a woman making media, but an academic woman making media as a method to engage in research questions around violence against women in general, and forced marriage and child brides in particular. The impetus to produce the film came from my academic projects over a number of years exploring gender politics and the Middle East, representations of religion, violence against women (in the form of 'honour' crimes, virginity tests, forced marriage and domestic sexual violence) in the media in general, and in films in particular. Yet, switching from theory to practice presents its own challenges, as one moves from ...
This article draws on original focus group research to explore constructions of ‘British values’, in ‘everyday’ discourse. Two prominent, yet competing conceptions of this term are identified: political/institutional and social/cultural. Although each of these conceptions risks essentialising ‘British values’, this risk is mitigated by publics in at least three ways: (1) explicit recognition of the term’s ambiguities; (2) discussion of its political motivations and exclusionary outcomes; and, (3) identification of qualitative change in the meaning of ‘British values’ over time. As the first exploration of public understandings of this term, their differences, and these complications, the paper offers three contributions: (1) adding breadth to existing studies of everyday nationalism through focus on ‘British values’ specifically; (2) shedding light on this trope’s work in broader conversations around social and political life in the United Kingdom; and (3) facilitating reflection on the reception of, resistance to, and re-making of elite political discourse.
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