This is a post by Karina, Victor, and MC about our experiences in the Civic Media Codesign class. You can find a timeline showing what we did in the class here.

Our group worked with Cambridge Community Television (CCTV) in the Spring 2013 Civic Media Codesign Studio. CCTV is a community media non-profit in Cambridge with a web-based citizen journalism program called NeighborMedia.

Process

The codesign process was incredibly iterative, and went through five stages.

This semester was a blast studying at Civic. I took Sasha Costanza-Chock's Introduction to Civic Media where we studied a series of civic engagement aspects that include media (in a large sense). One of the objective of the course is to get students to work on a civic media project their are passionate about and present the results in the end of the semester. In my case, I decided to work with the CivicMaps Toolkit.

For me, maps are really important for civic engagement. For a while I've been focusing on how the application of technology and innovation can enhance humanitarian action. It is well-known for many how the field changed drastically during the Haiti earthquake response. It was then when the Crisis Mapping community became internationally recognized for using new tools that included social media, networked collaboration and online crowdsourcing to collect, analyze and share information on where to send responders. I am a member of the Crisis Mappers community since then.

This is the final submission for the Intro to Civic Media Class.

I have posted some of my progress throughout the semester on this regard. Today I am posting my development and research but also the plans to move ahead. This class has been specially helpful on that regard, in taking my research forward and opening up new ways to further my investigation on this topic. I will provide here a short abstract and all the proper links to learn more and read the whole submission. I look forward to your comments.

This week in the Introduction to Civic Media class, we focused in exploring the 'continuity and change within and between media and communication technologies as tools for civic engagement and social change.' The premise proposed by the set of readings was to move beyond digital media in order to be critical around the 'relationship of 'old' media technologies to social change.'
How development in media impact or acompanies social shifts.

This week, the facilitators and scribes for the discussion was Rogelio, Callahn and myself. Rogelio started the discussion by reviewing James Carey's "Technology and Ideology: the Case of the Telegraph."

He explains the three major shifts, that came about with the telegraph. As told by Carey, the telegraph is the first example of communication and transportation being disaggregated. In a broad overview, we discussed how the telegraph impacted the industrial world, changing management techniques, organizational structure, etc. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we not only have immeasurable amounts of information available about the human experience in the planet, but are generating much more than we can possibly digest. The suggestive term “digital exhaust” is a common description of that phenomenon in today’s academic literature.

How do Chinese NGOs integrate new technologies to their work? What are the biggest barriers for them to fully take advantage of new technologies? Are information communication technology(ICT) infrastructures still the barriers for grassroots NGOs? What type of assistance they might need to develop integrated practices of the internet to advance their causes? Aiming at answering these questions, NGO2.0 is launching our third ICT capacity survey!

(Scene of 2012 Chengdu Web2.0 Training Workshop, China)

My name is M. C. McGrath. I am a student at Boston University who is taking the Intro to Civic Media class this fall. I have been around the Media Lab a bit for the past three years as a research intern in Affective Computing but lately I have gotten quite interested in the work of the Civic Media group. These past two years I have gotten involved in the free information and Occupy movements. I am one of the founders of a nonprofit called Civic Counsel that creates technology to promote civic engagement, makes tools for activists, and teaches people how to use the tools we create and others.