Before the COVID-19 crisis, in-person engagement was the main method of ensuring community participation in participatory research processes. However, the pandemic accelerated the switch to digitally-mediated participatory research methods (DMPRMs). This article presents a case study of a digitally-mediated, human-centered design (DMHCD) process enhanced by digitally-mediated community-based participatory research approaches (DMCBPR) as part of our efforts to develop a digital access-to-justice platform for military veterans and their families. We reflect on our experience of enhancing DMHCD with DMCBPR approaches and include insights about how to facilitate the transition from in-person HCD+CBPR to DMHCD-DMCBPR. We also discuss the dual challenges of combining two different approaches while shifting to a virtual/online participatory research framework. Finally, the present study aims to achieve the following objectives: first, to add to a small—but growing—body of research around digitally-mediated participatory research methods; and second, to add to the emerging literature on HCD+CBPR integration approaches to design interventions for underserved populations.

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Abstract‘Success replaces legitimacy’ (Foucault, 2004). This assertion serves as the premise for this paper, exploring corporations that accept responsibility—or are being forced to take responsibility—for certain public issues because they are successful and, therefore, are seen as legitimate actors in the defence of individual rights in the digital age. Specifically, this paper extends the theoretical utility of applying a Foucauldian perspective of governmentality to the corporation, as set out in Collier and Whitehead’s (2021) Corporate Governmentality: Building the Empirical and Theoretical Case. In particular we seek to extend one of the Collier and Whitehead’s proposed typologies: forced governmentality. Using the Foucauldian analytical language of governmentality, it is possible to illuminate aspects of corporate governmental ambition that were previously unavailable through the current discourses. The crux of the issue consists of modern technologies that create governmental problems but are governed by the companies that created them. Consequently, the private sector actors that contribute to the creation technological problems are being forced to manage related action spaces. Using Facebook as a case study, this paper identifies the characteristics of forced governmentality through a critical reading of Mark Zuckerberg’s Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement.

Participatory action research (PAR) methods aim to position the people who are most affected by the issue being studied as equal partners in the research process through a cyclical process of data gathering, data analysis, planning and implementing action and evaluation and reflection. In doing so, it ensures that the research better reflects participants’ ideas, priorities, and needs, thereby enhancing its validity and relevance and the support for the findings and proposed changes. Furthermore, it generates immediately applicable results. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences of developing the UK’s first access to justice platform for veterans and their families through an ongoing PAR project that brought together armed forces veterans, representatives from veterans' service providers, and the Veterans Legal Link team members comprising of legal academics, lawyers, sociologists, computer software designers and graphic designers to collect, interpret, and apply community information to address issues related to the delivery of access to justice. We present findings from Stages 1 and 2 of our three-stage iterative research process which includes the following steps: Understanding and cross-checking the lived experience of the veteran community (Stage 1), developing and testing a prototype of the access to justice platform (Stage 2) and creating the final product and giving real users an opportunity to use the platform (Stage 3). Data collection and analysis from Stage 1 of the study informed the themes that underpinned Stage 2. Specifically, data was collected through the following methods: co-facilitated focus group discussions, a web survey that was codesigned with veteran community stakeholders and remote and digitally enabled ethnographic research methods. We include several reflections that may help legal practitioners and researchers interested in applying PAR within the area of access to justice and the field of legal research.

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