This blog is part of SLSA blog series ‘Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law’, which takes a socio-legal and citizen-focussed approach to the rule of law, exploring its social foundations, innovative methods, and perspectives from Hungary, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Serbia. The series is guest edited by Dr Erin Jackson, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen on the comparative research project CITIZENS-LAW, which aims to strengthen the rule of law in the EU through mixed method research on societal conceptions of law.
Rule of law through the lens: the use of photo elicitation to explore the rule of law from the citizen perspective
Erin Jackson, Postdoctoral researcher and Lecturer Empirical Legal Research, University of Groningen
The importance of and questions about ordinary people’s perspective of the law across contexts raised earlier in this blog series raise equally important methodological questions about how to meaningfully gain insight into citizens’ perspectives. Some effective options have already been addressed, for example in the form of open survey questions and the visualization of data in easily digestible formats such as WordClouds. In keeping with the prospect of visual methods, there is vast potential in another underutilized qualitative technique: the photo-elicitation interview.
Photo-elicitation: the photo as a basis for dialogue
The idea of giving voice to people through photographs in order to identify, enhance and represent themselves or their communities finds roots in a seminal paper by Wang and Burris (1994) which used photos to document ‘portraits of participation’ of women’s lives in rural Chinese communities. This original idea of the photo novella soon became known as photovoice, in which the authors placed emphasis on shifting the power to the participant and opening an avenue for participant-driven narratives (Wang and Burris, 1997). As a method, the photo elicitation interview, based on inserting a photograph into the research interview, follows along similar lines. This is especially true for auto-driven photo-elicitation interviews, in which the photograph is taken by the interviewee (Clark, 1999), as opposed to provided by the researcher (Shohel and Mahruf, 2012).
The general process of a photo-elicitation interview is as follows:
- Identify the topic of inquiry
- Invite study participants
- Take photos relevant to a particular topic (researcher or participant)
- Use photos to guide interviews and elicit dialogue with the interviewee
- Analyse the data and report findings
The implementation of the method can differ in how participants are selected, the way in which photos are collected, how the interview is conducted, and how the resulting visual data are analysed. Importantly, in the auto-driven interview, the interviewee is free to take, select and speak about photos they find most relevant, albeit within the topic of the research. The researcher gives basic instruction to the participant but does not dictate what photo they take and what in turn that photo means to them. Instead, the interview acts as a basis to explore the photographs with regard to the topic and to have the participant situate their meaning in their proper context.
Uses of photo-elicitation: storytelling and inquiry
The photo-elicitation method has been used to effectively capture ordinary life and lived experience in different contexts and across many disciplines. For example, it has been used to explore the well-being of marginalized populations (Ortega-Alcazar and Dyck, 2011), to visualize sustainable community development (Auken, Frisvoll and Stewart, 2010), to facilitate community-based participatory research in indigenous communities (Castleden, Garvin and Huu-ay-aht First Nation, 2008) and to document children’s development and healthcare (Epstein, Stevens and Baruchel, 2006). The perspectives gained from these types of studies can be used to influence policy changes. In educational research, it has been used to enhance understanding of practitioners’ and students’ experiences in real classrooms and school communities (Zhang and Hennebry-Leung, 2023), better positioning researchers to engage with school stakeholders when contributing to policy discussions (Torre and Murphy, 2015). Yet, despite its efficacy, the method has less often been applied to the law or to discovering differing conceptions of the law as such. Just as we might ask to interviewees to take photos of their experience at school or what they associate with their healthcare, we can also ask: what do you associate with law in your daily life?
The benefit of the photo-elicitation here is two-fold: it is one part the photo itself and one part the conversation it invokes. The former – the photo itself – can be a powerful and standalone testament to the place of law in everyday life. Even when the subject or object appears non-remarkable, it reveals to us the common associations people have with the law and how it manifests in daily life. For the latter – the interview – the photo acts as a springboard to a host of deeper meanings, positive and negative experiences, memories, feelings and attitudes towards the law. The simplicity of the photo in this way leads to complex conversations. This particular form of representation – photographs – produces a new kind of information and ‘enlarges the possibilities of conventional empirical research’ (Harper, 2002).
Exploring the rule of law through a citizen lens
In the context of the rule of law, literature that shifts away from institutional checklists and instead explores the value and meaning of the rule of law in societies (see e.g. Gutmann, Kantorowicz and Voigt, 2024) opens up new avenues for exploring what has been called the social foundations of the rule of law (Hertogh, 2024). Photo-elicitation as a visual method fits within this research paradigm succinctly. It offers a novel way to see through the citizen’s lens and to be told firsthand the meaning of and story behind a photograph. Alongside other mixed methods (surveys, focus groups and social media analysis), the CITIZENS-LAW project uses photo-elicitation interviews to explore citizens’ perceptions and legal consciousness, or in other words to understand ‘the way in which law is experienced and interpreted by specific individuals as they engage, avoid, or resist the law or legal meanings’ (Silbey, 2001). As part of a comparative approach, it asks: How do people in the Netherlands, Denmark and Hungary experience the (rule of) law in their everyday life?
In keeping with the bottom-up and citizen-driven nature of the method, the interviewees in our study will be given basic instruction to take at least 10 photos of anything that they associate with the law. Based on their own selection, the interview will explore the meanings behind these photos and give ample space for the interviewee to outline its significance for them. Through qualitative analysis (coding), the interviews across three countries will be explored in light of positive and negative associations with the law and the legal system, such as perspectives of punitiveness or responsiveness. This accounts for conceptions of elements of the pre-defined notion of the rule of law, for example as defined by the Venice Commission (Rule of Law Checklist), but also leaves ample space for other perceived elements of the rule of law raised that may be societally relevant or relevant across different demographics of the population.
Example images Martin Cathrae Flickr
In our focus groups across the Netherlands, Denmark and Hungary, we utilised a more traditional method of photo-elicitation in which the photos are provided and respondents are asked to select a photo that represents what the law means to them. This fit the focus group format and yielded insights about how people feel about the law. One Dutch respondent searched for a feather, a symbol to show their feeling that the ‘penalties in the Netherlands are much too light’. Another chose a close-up of applauding hands of people in suits, to show that law ‘it’s kind of a business thing’. Here the images evoked a response though they were not taken by the respondents themselves. To build on the insights gained from the focus groups, the use of auto-driven photo-elicitation interviews will afford participants more time and more opportunity to create photos that represent what they find most important or relevant and to discuss them at length to uncover their personal connotation.
Incorporating photo-elicitation as a method
Photo-elicitation, carried out ethically (Bugos, Fassos and Fitzgerald, 2014), has enormous potential for application, particularly when auto-driven. It can be used to explore perceptions, to give voice to vulnerable or marginalized groups and to capture aspects of our societies that as researchers we cannot access, directly witness or easily understand. The method empowers participants to tell their own story and opens an avenue for important voices to be heard. It can give way to ideas, opinions or societal problems not known by the researcher or not fully understood in all its aspects. True to the origins of photo novella, the visceral reaction that photographs evoke can mobilize, impact communities or spur social action (Mayfield-Johnson and Butler, 2017), especially where the power of the photo demonstrates a societal need. In an increasingly visual world, it is one method, easily combined with others (surveys, focus groups), that gives us a more unobstructed view into the lives of different people and different groups. For us, in our project, it provides a window into the social foundation of the rule of law, where what we see is not prescribed by a checklist but instead driven by the citizen experience.
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