Trust

Built for sensitive community stories

Photovoice works because participants stay in control of their own photographs and narratives. These are the controls Photovoice360 provides to the organizations, facilitators, and researchers who run projects here.

Access is project-scoped

Project data is private by default and separated by project. Participants can access only their authorized project experience. Facilitators can access only the projects they are authorized to facilitate. Database and storage policies—not screen design alone—enforce those boundaries.

Photographs are held in private storage

Participant uploads are stored privately. A photograph appears in a participant-only or public project gallery only when the facilitator has approved the submission and selected that gallery setting for the project.

Originals are preserved and usable copies are created

Photovoice360 preserves the participant’s original upload and creates a JPEG display copy for review, galleries, workbooks, and downloads. This allows photographs uploaded directly from an iPhone to remain usable without asking participants to resize or convert them.

One project consent is completed before participation

Before contributing, each participant reads and signs one project consent that clearly lists how submitted photographs, narratives, reflections, and project responses may be used. Those disclosed uses are conditions of participation; there are no optional-use checkboxes or later public-sharing, gallery, research, publication, re-consent, withdrawal, or subject-release steps.

Attribution is chosen once

Each participant chooses whether submitted work is identified by Full name, First name only, Initials, or Anonymous. The private facilitator record may still contain the information needed to administer the project.

Final submission is final

A participant may stop before submitting a final contribution. After final submission, the participant cannot edit, replace, delete, reopen, or withdraw that contribution through Photovoice360, including after a facilitator declines or does not accept it into the project record.

Dissemination is facilitator-controlled

The facilitator decides whether the project gallery is Off, Participants Only, or Public and determines which completed submissions are accepted into the project record or approved for a stated project output.

Participant wording is preserved

Participant photographs, narratives, and reflections are not silently rewritten. Facilitator notes, coding, edited presentation material, and AI-supported suggestions remain separate and clearly identified.

AI supports the process without speaking for participants

Built-in guidance can explain methodology, suggest questions, organize project material, identify possible patterns for review, and help draft facilitator or organizational documents. It cannot decide what a participant’s photograph means, replace participant-authored language, or turn a suggestion into a validated theme or final finding.

Photography rule

Each project sets its photography rule before collection. Participants see and confirm the rule selected for that project before uploading a photograph. A project may require no identifiable faces or no people in participant photographs. Photovoice360 does not present one project's photography rule as a universal rule of Photovoice.

Institutional responsibility

Photovoice360 does not represent itself as HIPAA, FERPA, IRB, or otherwise certified or compliant and does not claim that any technology is completely secure. The organization conducting the project remains responsible for its legal, ethical, data-governance, and institutional-review requirements.

There is no public social layer

Notes between a participant and their facilitator are visible to them and to facilitators of that project. There are no public comments, likes, or follower counts, and no public directory of projects or galleries.