We are living in a historical moment known for its emphasis on media engagement and anticipated impact. The evolution of mobile media technology, the ubiquity of social media, and the omnipresence of multiple media platforms have led to new and evolving modes of interaction as well as magical thinking about the infinite possibilities to create change with the documentary impulse. The interactive conditions of digital culture align with a significant historical moment: growing political and social upheaval, economic crisis, dissatisfaction with representative government, and disillusionment with state institutions. While the documentary genre is frequently conceptualised as a democratic tool with civic potential, the way it functions in the process of social change is variable, contingent and riddled with ethical considerations.

The advocacy film is a time-honored tradition in documentary history, made specifically for the aims of democratic exchange and yet the documentary industry is slow in confronting its own political tourism legacies, recording social injustices where the most significant benefit of production serves filmmakers and not the communities on the screen. While the commercial documentary industry has embraced a top-down impact model, there is another grassroots participatory media model worth considering as an ethical pathway to redistributive justice with the documentary impulse. This presentation will focus on contemporary production practices within this evolving public commons where documentary moving image discourse is a vibrant pathway of political exchange. Focusing on the relationship between documentary and collective organising in the US historical context, the presentation will suggest that participatory, collective and community media practices can be harnessed to correct the tendencies of problematic tourism and surface level transformation.