Recent news from the Center for Civic Media

Are you creating change? Ask harder.

Submitted by mstem on June 6, 2013 - 11:41am

A post from Personal Democracy Forum in NYC, where I'm live-Tumblring on the official Civic Tumblr.

"This work is hard. If it were easy, it would be done already."
-Micah Sifry, asking the PdF community to take care of one another

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman runs SumofUs.org, and is Aaron Swartz's bereaved partner.

You know nothing, ~~Jon Snow~~ campaigners

How do you know when you're changing the world (a component of how DO you change the world?)

Taren says that organizers empower other people to create change, while campaigners set their sites on a specific change and go about creating that change, whether that involves empowering other communities, or drinks with a Senator's nephew.

This is a room full of campaigners. Taren challenges us to temporarily suspendthe assumption that we're accomplishing anything

A Conversation with Beth Noveck [LiveBlog]

Submitted by Petey on June 4, 2013 - 3:15pm

On May 29th the Media Lab hosted a conversation with Beth Noveck. The following liveblog was compiled by Ed Platt, Matt Stempeck, Erhardt Graeff, and myself.

SeattleMonkeys: How A Cat Poster Inspired Our Technology for Inclusion

Submitted by natematias on June 4, 2013 - 2:15pm

How can we make planning more open and inclusive? Inspired by a cat poster, SeattleMonkeys asks community residents to call a number to share their ideas on local affairs and transportation.

This summer, I'm in Seattle as an intern for Microsoft research FUSE Labs with Andrés Monroy-Hernández (whose work on Scratch I have blogged about) and Shelly Farnham. I'll write soon about my summer at Microsoft, but this is a story about what Andrés and I did together on the weekend, outside of our Microsoft work.

Undocuhack: Hack immigration with Undocutech this weekend

Submitted by beckyh on May 30, 2013 - 12:38am

Undocutech is organizing for the National Day of Civic Hacking! Come hack for immigrant rights with us. We’ll be joining #hackforchange in locations all around the country June1-2.

Can’t join on June1-2, but interested in learning how to use media and technology to support immigrant rights? Let us know who you are here: bit.ly/helloundocutech and we’ll include you in meetups and hangouts.

We're keeping this running document of information about how to participate: bit.ly/undocuhack

#FBrape campaign scores quick victory against Facebook hate speech

Submitted by mstem on May 29, 2013 - 1:26pm

How many major brands need to pull their advertising from Facebook to affect its policies governing speech?

One, apparently.

Last week I wrote up the #FBrape campaign's strategy: to hold Facebook accountable for the misogynistic content of its users by pressuring advertisers. Only seven days after the open letter was published, Marne Levine, Facebook's VP of Global Publicy Policy, published a response agreeing to the campaign's demands to better train the company's moderators, improve reporting processes, and hold offending users more accountable for the content they publish.

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