# How to select and include contextual case studies related to the FPIs

<table border="1" id="bkmrk-reflection-exercise%21" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td style="width: 100%;">##### *<span lang="en-US">Reflection exercise!</span>*

<span lang="en-US">As you prepare for your conversation, reflect on some of the local issues that you and those around you face in your context related to the internet and digital technologies. For example,</span>

- <span lang="en-US">Does your country experience internet shutdowns? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">To what extent does your government censor internet content? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">Have participants in the room experienced harassment, surveillance, or any form of violence online? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">How has the increased use of marketplace databases and on-demand service apps affected the distribution of economic power in your country? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">How does the increasing power of big tech companies impact the ability to remain anonymous online? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">How do digital technologies enable or restrict local activism? </span>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<span lang="en-US">There will be many ways in which the FPIs and their clusters might apply to different challenges you face in your context. As a result, it can be difficult to decide which issues to raise, which case studies to use as examples, and how to have a conversation about them. </span>

<span lang="en-US">Let’s look at how to surface some of the issues experienced in your context, and then at how to select and have a conversation about case studies related to those issues. </span>

#### <span lang="en-US">Surfacing issues experienced in your context</span>

<span lang="en-US">Remember, a key objective from this part of your conversation should be ensuring that participants come away with a strong understanding of </span><span lang="en-US"><span style="color: #800080;">**how the FPIs relate to their work and their lives**</span>.</span> <span lang="en-US">As such, it is always important to start surfacing issues from the positionalities of your participants, as opposed to saying upfront as facilitator what those issues could include generally. </span>

<span lang="en-US">Getting participants to reflect on the connections between the FPIs and their lives comes down to </span><span lang="en-US">asking the right questions!</span> <span lang="en-US">If folks are hearing about the FPIs for the first time, it can be easy for them to feel like they have no knowledge to share in a discussion about the FPIs or the politics of the internet. Asking broad generalised questions - such as, </span>*<span lang="en-US">‘How is the principle of Access challenged in different parts of the world?’</span>*<span lang="en-US"> or, </span>*<span lang="en-US">‘Why is the principle of Anonymity important?’</span>*<span lang="en-US"> - will often render generalised answers, that stifle the direction of the conversation to go deeper. Furthermore, many may not know how to answer, or may feel like the FPIs do not apply to them. </span>

<span lang="en-US">However, when you </span>**<span lang="en-US" style="color: #800080;">ask participants about their experiences</span>**<span lang="en-US">, this </span>

- <span lang="en-US">immediately makes the FPIs relatable</span>
- <span lang="en-US">situates the FPIs within the lives of participants</span>
- <span lang="en-US">brings every participant down to the same level of expertise, since everyone is an expert of their own lives</span>
- <span lang="en-US">creates space for participants to find resonance with the experiences of one another</span>

<p class="callout success">**<span lang="en-US">Asking folks about their experiences ensures deeper and more participative conversations!</span>**</p>

<span lang="en-US">So, how do we ask questions about participants’ experiences that entice their curiosity and spark in-depth debate? There are three key factors to consider that will inform the kinds of questions you ask:</span>

1. <span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">Who is in the room?</span>** </span><span lang="en-US">To what movements, unions, communities or occupations do your participants belong? Are your participants journalists? Coders? Are they abortion rights activists or part of workers’ union? Do your participants represent a gender-diverse community, or are they residents of the same neighbourhood?</span>
2. <span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">Where is the conversations being held?</span>**</span><span lang="en-US"> Is the conversation a national one or a hyperlocal one? What country, city or neighbourhood are you hosting from? Is the conversation taking place online, with folks representing many geographical places, but from a common movement? </span>
3. <span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">What brought you all together to have a conversation about the FPIs in the first place?</span>**</span><span lang="en-US"> What was the purpose negotiated between yourself and your participants at the beginning of your conversation, for bringing you together? What do you collectively want to achieve? </span>

<span lang="en-US">Your answers to these questions will help guide your decision around the kinds of questions you ask your participants about their experiences of using technology in their fields of work, activism and lives. For example, if your conversation has journalists present that often face threats or intimidation from government, a question you may ask could be, </span>*<span lang="en-US">‘As a journalist in your country, what apps do you prefer to use to communicate with your sources and why?</span>*<span lang="en-US">*’* If your conversation has attracted more of a techie crowd of web developers or coders, a question you could ask is, </span><span lang="en-US">*‘Have you ever created a pseudonym for yourself online out of a need or desire to be elusive or anonymous? What was it? What was the reason?’*</span>

<span lang="en-US">If the conversation becomes generalised, bring participants back to their experiences by asking them to </span><span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">tell stories</span>**</span> <span lang="en-US">of specific scenarios! As stories are recounted, make a note of each one using a flipchart that folks can see, or a shared online notepad to which everyone has access. </span>

<span lang="en-US">For each story, note down the key issue, as well as what happened in the participants’ experiences. </span>

#### <span lang="en-US">How to select and have a conversation about case studies</span>

<span lang="en-US">By the end of the previous discussion, you would have noted a number of stories from the experiences of different participants. These stories may have expanded conversations to other examples of similar events, or have led participants in the room to discover similarities in their experiences confronting the same issue. </span><span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">Whether from the lives of participants, or examples given from the floor of similar events, these stories are your case studies!</span>**</span>

<span lang="en-US">Take a moment to observe any </span><span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">commonalities</span>**</span><span lang="en-US"> that are arising in the stories being told, or any similarities in the challenges being surfaced. Depending on the amount of time you have allocated for this part of your conversation, select one or more case studies that seem to have the most resonance among the experiences of participants.</span>

<span lang="en-US">It is now time to take the conversation back to the FPIs and how they relate to the experiences that have just been shared. This can be done collectively, or you can split participants into groups to speak about a case study each. </span>

<span lang="en-US">For each case study, </span><span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">ask questions that will lead to exploring and interrogating the issues at hand from a feminist perspective</span>**</span><span lang="en-US"><span style="color: #800080;">**.**</span> The questions around each case study can include, for example:</span>

- <span lang="en-US">To which cluster or principles does the case study relate? Does it relate to a single cluster or principle or is it at the intersection of two or more clusters or principles?</span>
- <span lang="en-US">In the selected case study, what technology was involved?</span>
- <span lang="en-US">Who was in control? What was their intention?</span>
- <span lang="en-US">What was the key barrier / challenge to / opportunity for the FPIs being realised in the case?</span>
- <span lang="en-US">Who was most impacted? How? </span>
- <span lang="en-US">Did the scenario create more ways and spaces to be / express / organise / gain autonomy online? If so, in what ways?</span>
- <span lang="en-US">Did the scenario affect you, either positively or negatively? If so, how?</span>

<span lang="en-US">There are numerous methodological processes for drawing out responses to these questions. We have put together </span><span style="color: #800080;">**<span lang="en-US">a growing repository of stories from the field</span>**</span><span lang="en-US">, or methodological processes, that organisers of previous local conversations from around the world have used! Gather ideas from the [next section (Stories from the field)](https://explorefpi.apc.org/books/explore-fpis-toolkit/page/stories-from-the-field "Stories from the field")!</span>