Sasha Costanza-Chock is a communications scholar, participatory designer, and activist. They were an Associate Professor of Civic Media at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 ...

and are a Faculty Affiliate at the

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...

. Costanza-Chock is author of numerous publications about information and communication technologies and social movements, including the books ''Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets! Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement,'' and ''Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need''. Costanza-Chock is regularly cited in print and web media as an academic expert on issues involving media, design, and social movements.

Contributions

Costanza-Chock researches

social movements A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and ma ...

, media, and communications technologies, and has published work about Occupy Wall Street, the immigrant rights movement in the U.S., the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

, the CRIS campaign for communication rights, and media policy, among other areas. As an activist they have contributed to

citizen media Citizen media is content produced by private citizens who are not professional journalists. Citizen journalism, participatory media and democratic media are related principles. Background "Citizen media" was coined by Clemencia Rodriguez, who ...

projects such as VozMob, Transmission, and

Indymedia The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seattl ...

. Their first book ''Out of the Shadows, into the Streets! Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement'' was published by

The MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

in 2014. Writing about

DREAM Act The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to illegal immigrants who entered the United States a ...

scholarship for ''The Journal of Higher Education'', Michael Olivas called the book "a fascinating and liberating study of the social media used by various DREAMer factions". In a review in ''Information, Communication & Society'' Koen Leurs called the book "a reflective, situated, historically and contextually aware account of rights movements in the United States". It was also made available for free download by the MIT Press under a Creative Commons license. In 2018, their paper, ''Design Justice, A.I., and Escape from the Matrix of Domination'' won a $10,000 essay competition in the Journal of Design and Science. Their second book, ''Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need'' was published in March 2020 by

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

and is available Open Access at https://design-justice.pubpub.org. Costanza-Chock is regularly cited as an academic expert on media and activism topics, including the student response to the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, movements to unionize tech workers, and the

doxing Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...

white supremacists White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

Education and career

Costanza-Chock received their A.B. from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, M.A. from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, and Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

. After receiving their Ph.D., Costanza-Chock took up a position at the

, where they were Associate Professor of Civic Media. They are also a board member of Allied Media Projects.

Honors and awards

* 2021 Engineering & Technology PROSE Award Finalist for their book ''Design Justice'' * 2019 MIT John S.W. Kellett '47 Award, "for an exceptional and/or sustained commitment to creating a more welcoming environment at MIT" for LGBTQ+ individuals

Bibliography

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Notes

References

External links

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Interview on "The Move" podcastOpen Access version of the book ''Design Justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Costanza-Chock, Sasha American mass media scholars Harvard University alumni Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) University of Pennsylvania alumni USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism alumni