Co-designing Media at the Local Level: The Social TV Framework

In this chapter, we propose an alternative view to design-driven participatory processes, which reclaims the cultural dimension and emphasises the central role of media and media contents in cultural production and participation. Social TV is a framework for social inclusion and community engagement based on different areas of knowledge and supports design practice. In particular, we focus on three: media studies, participatory video and narratives. The first part of the chapter defines the contribution of the three areas and the process for developing design-driven interventions; the second introduces three practice-based design research cases as examples of Social TV applied to place-based communities. In particular, one of those cases is the campUS Social TV, which experimented with actions for connecting on and off campus activities as a model for social inclusion. This is introduced in this chapter and will be developed further in the third section of the book.