The

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Center for Civic Media (formerly the Center for Future Civic Media) was a research and practical center that developed and implemented tools that supported political action and "the information needs of iviccommunities". Its mission read in part: :The MIT Center for Civic Media creates and deploys technical and social tools that fill the information needs of communities. :We are inventors of new technologies that support and foster civic media and political action; we are a hub for the study of these technologies; and we coordinate community-based test beds both in the United States and internationally. At the end of August, 2020, the Center for Civic Media closed down.

History

The Center for Civic Media was founded in 2007 as a joint effort of the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

and the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. Its initial funding, a four-year grant from the Knight Foundation, was won in a contest "to foster blogs and other digital efforts that seek to bring together residents of a city or town in ways that local newspapers historically have done." The founders planned to "develop new technologies and practices to help newspapers attract readers as a greater number of Americans use the Internet as their primary news source." It expanded in 2011. Staffed by academic, technical, and professional staff, the Center was originally led by Christopher Csikszentmihályi, along with the Media Lab's

Mitchel Resnick Mitchel Resnick (born June 12, 1956) is Lego Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. , Resnick serves as h ...

and Comparative Media Studies' Henry Jenkins.

Ethan Zuckerman Ethan Zuckerman (born 1973) is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020, and the a ...

was announced as the Center's new director in June 2011. Others affiliated with the center include

Sasha Costanza-Chock Sasha Costanza-Chock is a communications scholar, participatory designer, and activist. They were an Associate Professor of Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and are a Faculty Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & ...

, Benjamin Mako Hill, William Uricchio, Jing Wang,

Joy Buolamwini Joy Adowaa Buolamwini is a Ghanaian-American-Canadian computer scientist and digital activist based at the MIT Media Lab. Buolamwini introduces herself as a poet of code, daughter of art and science. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League ...

, and Jeffrey Warren. In August, 2019, Zuckerman announced his intention to leave MIT, motivated by the Media Lab's ties to

Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School in Manhattan, des ...

. The Center for Civic Media closed down at the end of August, 2020.

Research and development

The Center creates tools for deployment and testing in geographic communities. Like the Media Lab, the work is iterative, experimental, and draws in large part on the work of current graduate students. But unlike much other work at the Media Lab, Center tools are expected to have immediate applications, even if narrowly focused on a specific community's need. With varying levels of adoption, deployed civic media tools and communities have included:
Grassroots Mapping
(Gulf of Mexico oil spill; the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, Superfund site), a collection of cartographic tools and practices—such as best practices for using balloons, kites, inexpensive cameras, and open-source software—for citizens to produce their own aerial imagery. Grassroots Mapping grew into the larger Public Lab, which won
$500,000 Knight News Challenge grant
for its work.
Lost in Boston: Realtime
(Boston, MA; South Wood County, WI, under the name Sameboat), displays local information in shared areas at low cost, such as using LED screens to display live bus arrival data in places people prefer to be, such as stores or coffeehops near bus stops rather than at bus stops themselves.
Sourcemap
which maps supply chains of consumer goods. * Between the Bars, a blogging platform for prisoner

Crónicas de Héroes
Hero Reports, a method for reporting small acts of civic heroism. (Utilized in Juárez, Mexico, and elsewhere) * People's Bot ( telepresence robot){{citation , title=My day as a robot , author= Leon Neyfakh , date=May 11, 2014 , work=Boston Globe , url= https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/05/10/day-robot/6UAMgmUFn0mZhoMS8vy0GK/story.html

History

Research and development

References

Further reading