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.

David Ardia, Daniel Schuman, and Micah Sifry

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.

Micah Sifry is a co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum.

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.

Co-sponsor: The MIT Center for Future Civic Media

Our lives are increasingly mediated by computers and data – a shift that is becoming more and more natural to us. From Data.gov to real-time municipal bus information, data in many forms from many sources is being made available and recombined in ways we could not have anticipated just ten years ago, when everyone used the phone book, and when restaurant and movie reviewers numbered in the tens not the tens of thousands.

More about the conference: http://civic.mit.edu/conference2010

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation--sponsor of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media--in June 2010 announced their 2010 Knight News Challenge winners. Together, these winners form another ground-breaking, visionary class of civic media developers, inventors, and entrepreneurs.

This is video of the announcement by Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen, as introduced by the Center's director Chris Csikszentmihályi. Please join us in congratulating the winners:

In a live demonstration of globe-straddling communication technologies like Skype, this forum connects to citizen journalists and activists around the world, some of whom frequently test the limits of governmental authority. Moderator Ethan Zuckerman wonders if these new digital forms are fundamentally liberating, providing users access to public spaces they might otherwise be denied. He pursues this line of inquiry in a series of internet conversations with correspondents covering some of the world’s most ravaged or oppressed regions.

Linda Fantin and Ellen Miller, with moderator Chris Csikszentmihalyi

From The Future of Civic Engagement in a Broadband-Enabled World, a symposium hosted by the MIT Center for Future Civic Media in cooperation with the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Initiative (broadband.gov).

Keynote address by Eugene Huang, Director of Government Performance and Civic Engagement for the FCC's National Broadband Plan.

MIT Center for Future Civic Media Director Chris Csikszentmihalyi presents the Center's most recent projects. From community mapping to news tracking, from collective action to rural empowerment, from cultural mixing to carbon consciousness, civic media is any technology or technique that strengthens a geographic community. Civic media researchers will demonstrate their projects in a lightning-round format, with time for discussion and questions following each presentation listed below.