Paper short abstract:

Professor Sarah Hartley (University of Exeter), Dr Rob Smith (University of Edinburgh), and Dr Aleksandra Stelmach (University of Exeter)

Paper long abstract:

In this session, we screen our second (low-budget) documentary that draws on and informs our qualitative research, and then facilitate discussion on doing STS through film.In 2023, we shot a short documentary film on the governance of gene drive mosquitos in Uganda. We found very few people talking about this genetic technology with most conversations occurring in elite circles, little publicly available information, and a focus on educating communities around the insectary for consent. This situation starkly juxtaposes elite statements inferring that ‘Africans will decide’. Chanan (2007) argues “documentary addresses the viewer primarily as a citizen, a member of civil society and participant in the public sphere”. As such, it is well-aligned with STS ways of making and doing. Our goal was to stimulate debate about technological futures to empower people to develop opinions and debate these futures. We contextualised gene drive mosquitoes by shooting in Uganda, interviewing only Ugandans, and getting their input into the film’s design. We drew on people from our focus group and interview research to hear their voices, aspirations, hopes, and fears, and show how they make sense of the technology and wrestle with it. But documentaries also make claims of truthfulness and are expected to be fair and honest. As critical STS scholars, we are aware of how challenging these claims and expectations are to create. We faced difficult decisions about how to convey knowledge, manage tensions between exposing power imbalances and providing neutrality, and navigate the complexities related to our own positionality.