Participatory Design and Critical Media Studies: a Convivial Conversation

In the age of platform society, Critical Media Studies are faced with the challenge of developing not only theoretical proposals capable of critically addressing the power exerted on society by GAFAM-owned digital platforms, but also of envisioning a praxis capable of changing the political economy of this corporate-driven digital media ecosystem. To do this, we believe that Participatory Design and Critical Media Studies should dialogue when it comes to theoretical frameworks and intervention practices. In this paper we propose to start this dialogue building upon the work of Ivan Illich, especially his book Tools for Conviviality. We find that in order to imagine a possible digital media design process able to avoid the creation of radical monopolies, it is necessary to adopt a Convivial Participatory Design approach where issues related to scale, people needs and power inequalities are considered by designers in collaboration with the users.