About ACTION! VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY

“Visual ethnography” is a research methodology whereby the researcher takes a camera into his/her research area and films the lifestyles, cultural events, and child-raising practices of the people living in that locality in order to study the interactions that are taking place.

This website introduces videos showing scenes of disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities as “ACTION! VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY videos.” The word “ACTION!” has been included in the title because the website presents videos capturing images of people in ACTION! carrying out disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities, and because it is our hope that all who visit this website will not only learn from the videos but also take ACTION! in their own communities, thereby spreading the disaster preparedness message. Also, if you have been involved in implementation or filming of disaster risk reduction education and/or community disaster preparedness activities in your community, we would greatly welcome your contributing such ACTION! VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY videos to this website. By doing so, you will be promoting mutual learning about disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities, leading to a chain of ACTION!

This website presents two types of ACTION! VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY.
(1) Videos of disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities (filming/editing)
(2) Videos of interviews with persons who appear in the aforementioned videos (schoolteachers, children, disaster preparedness administration personnel, researchers, etc.) and other relevant persons who have been shown the video in question. The interviewees express their impressions of the video and discuss events that, although not shown in the video, were nevertheless important in terms of promoting disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities.

This website welcomes both types of video. Please try and recall instances in which disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities conducted in your community were filmed. In many cases, filming and editing of such a video is carried out by a specific person. Consequently, the finished production will almost inevitably have been influenced by that person’s perspective. For example, parents will tend to film/edit videos in such a way that their children take center stage, while schoolteachers will prefer to film/edit videos so that the children/students receive equal screen time. Researchers will be more likely to film/edit videos in ways that relate to their particular research themes. So, no matter how scrupulously the videographer attempts to be objective in creating a video, his/her perspective will inevitably influence the end result, making it difficult for a video to fully express the actions and perspectives of all of the persons who appear in it. Accordingly, it was decided to simultaneously display both (1) Videos of disaster risk reduction education and community disaster preparedness activities (filming/editing) and (2) Videos of interviews with the individuals who appear in those videos and with other relevant persons who have been shown the material, whereby the interviewees express their impressions of the content and discuss events and information that, although not actually depicted, are nevertheless important for the community’s disaster risk reduction education and/or community disaster preparedness activities. Thus, we have ensured that each ACTION! VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY video expresses the inputs of a variety of people regarding the production with which each person was involved in some capacity. Naturally, when contributing to this website, it is fine to submit only Type 1 videos.