MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

Sasha Costanza-Chock is a scholar and mediamaker who works in areas including: social movements and ICTs; participatory technology design and community based participatory research; the transnational movement for media justice and communication rights; comunicación populár; mobile phones and social change; digital literacies and digital inclusion; race, class, and gender in digital space, the transformation of public media systems; the political economy of communication; and information and communications policy. He holds a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate, and is also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Sasha presently lives in Los Angeles, where he works with community-based organizations to develop critical digital literacies (for example, see http://vozmob.net). More information about Sasha’s work can be found at http://schock.cc.

Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow and Lecturer with the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. His ongoing research, teaching and creative practice engages the critical role of arts interventions in contested spaces and participatory media with marginalized youth. Nitin completed his doctoral work at the MIT Media Lab where he conducted research on open design collaboration and DIY cultures in the context of sustainable development, as well as wearable and responsive community media interfaces in transitional spaces. In 2008-2009 he served as a Visionary Fellow with the Jerusalem 2050 project, sponsored by the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for International Studies at MIT, conducting research on urban renewal and civic engagement through the media arts in divided cities such as Belfast and Jerusalem. Nitin co-founded the “Department of Play”, a research collaborative at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, focused on designing participatory technologies and pedagogical approaches to facilitate civic empowerment among marginalized children and youth. Over the past few years he has been conducting a digital storytelling and youth media program in the West Bank and Gaza, while developing a longitudinal research study on the role of participatory media for resilience and civic agency among youth in conditions of conflict and crisis. Nitin is currently working on a feature-length documentary film, Flying Paper, about the culture of kite making and flying in the Gaza Strip.

Governments, corporations, and communities plan for sudden crises: the White House drafts strong responsive rhetoric for the next terrorist attack; Toyota runs reassuring national TV spots within hours of a product recall; and 32 Massachusetts towns successfully publicize water distribution sites following a water main rupture. However, like the housing collapse or the recent Gulf oil spill, some crises are complex, difficult to warn of, and don’t cleanly fit traditional media frames. They are slow moving, and the media still struggles to rhetorically or technologically cover these simmering, rather than boiling, dramas. With government regulators weak, corporations still focused on the bottom line, and communities adapting to structural change, this Communications Forum asks: What new media tools and strategies can be used to help everyone better prepare for the unique communications challenges of slow-moving crises? Andrea Pitzer is editor of Nieman Storyboard, a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that looks at how storytelling works in every medium. Storyboard’s mission is to feature the best examples of visual, audio and multimedia narrative reporting. Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter for ProPublica — his recent work has focused on oil and gas industry practices. He is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master’s in journalism from Columbia University in 2003. He is the author of the book China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, a project that was funded in part by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Rosalind Williams is a historian who uses imaginative literature as a source of evidence and insight into the history of technology. She has taught at MIT since 1982 and currently serves as the Dibner Professor for the History of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. She has also served as head of the STS Program and Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs at the Institute, as well as president of the Society for the History of Technology. She has written three books as well as essays and articles about the emergence of a predominantly human-built world and its implications for human life. Her forthcoming book extends this theme to examine consciousness of the condition of “human empire” as expressed in the writings of Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson in the late 19th century. Moderated by Tom Levenson, who is Head and of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies as well as Director of its graduate program. Professor Levenson is the winner of Walter P. Kistler Science Documentary Film Award, Peabody Award (shared), New York Chapter Emmy, and the AAAS/Westinghouse award. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, Discover, The Sciences, and he is winner of the 2005 National Academies Communications Award for Origins.

In December of 2007, Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu, two of the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000, assembled many of the original members of that cult TV phenomenon to form Cinematic Titanic, a live and DVD version based on their original formula of riffing on terrible movies. The actors essentially play themselves as they participate in an experiment for some unknown, possibly shadowy corporation or military force. The story currently provided to the cast is that there is a tear in the “electron scaffolding” that threatens all digital media in the world. Their experience doing MST3K is key to the organization’s plans. Two of the cast, Trace Beaulieu and Mary Jo Pehl, discussed their thoughts on producing Cinematic Titanic which came to Boston on October 29th at the Wilbur Theater. They spoke with Generoso Fierro and Jason Begy, both of CMS’s GAMBIT Game Lab.

There are a growing number of games that are location-based. They use mobile devices and locative technologies to turn physical space into a game board. Games like Foursquare get people moving from place to place, exploring the world around them and potentially meeting people nearby. But while many games use location as the context for interaction, few use location as the content for interaction. Local Engagement Games (LEGs) are location-based games designed for the specificity of a location, with the intention of integrating into local cultures and local institutions. They reinforce existing geographical communities because the rules of the game are couched within existing rules of civic participation. Whether it’s a game built around a town hall meeting or a government planning process, LEGs scaffold local processes to foster community and commitment to civic life. In this talk, Gordon discusses two LEGs developed at the Engagement Game Lab. Participatory Chinatown is a 3-D role-playing game designed to be integrated into the master planning process of Boston’s Chinatown. And CommunityPlanIt, a location-based mobile game platform (in development), is designed to engage neighborhoods in official planning processes, while forging geographically-based communities and advocacy groups around local issues. Eric Gordon is an associate professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College and director of the new Engagement Game Lab. He is the author of The Urban Spectator: American Concept-cities from Kodak to Google (Dartmouth, 2010) and the co-author of the forthcoming book tentatively titled, Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World (Blackwell, 2011).

What do citizens need to know when they publicly address legally challenging or dangerous topics? Journalists have always had the privilege, protected by statute, of not having to reveal their sources. But as more investigative journalism is conducted by so-called amateurs and posted on blogs or websites such as Wikileaks, what are the legal dangers for publishing secrets in the crowdsourced era? We convene an engaging group law scholars to help outline the legal challenges ahead, suggest policies that might help to protect citizens, and describe what steps every civic media practitioner should take to protect themselves and their users. David Ardia is director of the Citizen Media Law Project which provides legal resources for those involved in online journalism and citizen media. Daniel Schuman is the policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation, where he helps develop policies that further Sunlight’s mission of catalyzing greater government openness and transparency. Moderator: Micah Sifry is a co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum. Co-sponsor: The MIT Center for Future Civic Media

What is happening to the intellectual field called the humanities? Powerful political and corporate forces are encouraging, even demanding science and math-based curricula to prepare for a globalized and technological world; the astronomical rise in the cost of higher education has resulted in a drumbeat of complaints, some which question the value of the traditional liberal arts and humanities. And of course, and far more complexly, the emerging storage and communications systems of the digital age are transforming all fields of knowledge and all knowledge industries. How has and how will the humanities cope with these challenges? How have digital tools and systems already begun to transform humanistic education? How may they do so in the future? More broadly, is there a significant role for the humanities in our digital future? Our panelists will explore these and related questions in what is expected to be the first in a continuing series on this subject. Alison Bylerly is provost and executive vice president and professor of English at Middlebury College. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and previously taught at MIT. He is the author of many essays and books including The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and How the Mind Works.

Professor Wang discusses the genesis and implementation of a civic media project that she conceptualized and launched in China in May 2009. The project, titled NGO2.0, is a social experiment that introduces Web 2.0 thinking and social media tools to the grassroots NGOs in the underdeveloped regions of China. How has new media complicated social action and civic engagement? What are the evolving stakes for social change proponents? How are change agents coping with governmental intervention in a country where social media is held suspect? Professor Wang speculates on the emergence of a new field of inquiry — social media action research — while sharing insights and findings about her involvement in shaping an NGO 2.0 culture in China.

The fate of newspapers is an ongoing subject for the Forum. This conversation explores the migration of newspapers to the internet and what that means for traditional concepts of journalism. Amid the emergence of citizens’ media and the blogosphere, newspapers are adapting to a changing mediascape in which print readership is in steady decline. David Carr, culture reporter and media columnist for the New York Times, and Dan Kennedy, professor of journalism at Northeastern University and author of the Media Nation blog, explore these developments with Forum Director David Thorburn. Among their topics: the best and the worst examples of news on the net, online-only news sites, hyperlocal news and collaborative journalism, business models for online newspapers, and the impact of social media on journalism.

One theme in the contemporary use of space involves the shift from production modeled around a physical, centralized “locus” to new virtual, extended and multi-axial modes of “projective” organization. We see this in new sculpture, new architecture, and, in electronic art, an expressive embrace of geographic dispersal. Although new materials, methods, and media have been central to modernist optimism, many of their resulting physical and actual constructions have been dismissed, discredited, misunderstood, or attacked. Using physical and virtual examples, Ricardo examines the strange tension between unanimous acceptance of new media and materials and the frequent rejection of new forms and structures they have made possible. Francisco Ricardo is media and contemporary art theorist. A Research Associate at the University Professors Program and co-director of the Digital Video Research Archive at Boston University, he also teaches digital media theory at the Rhode Island School of Design. His research examines historical, conceptual, and computational intersections between contemporary art and architecture, on one hand,and new media art and literature, on the other. Recent publications include Cyberculture and New Media (Rodopi, 2009) and Literary Art in Digital Performance (Continuum, 2009).