Hi Sasha, Becky, Class, and World,

My name's Arlene Ducao. I'm a second year Media Lab student in the Info Eco (http://eco.media.mit.edu) group. I'm looking forward to participating in the class in some way, particularly in the civic maps session; maps are at the central part of my thesis OpenIR (http://openir.media.mit.edu) and my Brooklyn design studio (http://dukode.com). I will conduct OpenIR user studies in Indonesia in January, and I'm hoping this class will give me a broad understanding of Civic Media in preparation for the study.

Hello everyone, my name is Kyle Yuan! I am a freshman here at MIT and Intro to Civic Media is my first HASS class of my college career. I had originally signed up for a different course, but due to a scheduling conflict, I added CMS.360 last week, so I did not attend the first meeting of the year. However, I am very interested in medical journalism and I aspire to be the next Sanjay Gupta, who is my idol in every way! In all seriousness though, Civic Media is essential and generally ubiquitous; we need it to become a well-informed populace, and it is everywhere we look (except in North Korea)! Since I did not attend the first class, I have a relatively uninformed opinion of the 10 points workshop. Based on what I can garner from the completed list however, I generally agree with everything that's on the list. Hive mind for the win!

Civic Media encompasses a huge breadth of knowledge and definition, but there are a few core aspects that aid in elucidating its definition:

Last week was the first meeting of CMS.360/860: Introduction to Civic Media. This is the second time I'm teaching the course, this year with Becky Hurwitz on board as TA. We've been revising the syllabus, based on a combination of feedback from last year's students, a massive sticky-note brainstorm by the incoming class, new developments in the field, the wisdom of crowds, and whimsy. You can take a look at the syllabus here: http://bit.ly/introcivicmedia2012.

I have recently joined the Center for Civic Media/MIT Media Lab as a Research Assistant. My background is in visual and media arts, software development and higher ed. In the arts, one thing I always worked against was the notion that "Art" (capital A, fancy Art) is the product of a lone genius working apart from society. I make artwork collaboratively with groups like the Institute for Infinitely Small Things and Platform2. And many projects involve the participation of specific publics such as the Institute's map The City Formerly Known as Cambridge where we invited residents and visitors to the city to propose new names for Cambridge's public spaces.

I just joined the Center for Civic Media and the Media Lab as a research assistant and graduate student. This fall I'm taking Sasha's Intro to Civic Media course to acquaint myself with the work of the Center and the philosophies and literature that underpin it. I hope by the end of the semester I will have a better understanding of the history of media activism, the key texts that inform the Center for Civic Media's directors, and how I might be able to contribute to the emerging field of Civic Media.

This past May I presented a thesis abstract proposal to the review board of the Dynamic Media Institute at MassArt that focused on how dynamic media may elevate the level of public discourse in our country. My feeling at the time was that the media’s penchant for polarized debates, combined with social media’s weak-tied, high-speed nature left us without the means for substantive, civil debate—political or otherwise. How serendipitous, then, the fact that a public protest movement, centered around political and economic discourse, popped up just as I was gaining a stronger understanding of the theories behind civic participation via Intro to Civic Media.

Con este proyecto, intente aplicar algunas de las teorías y conceptos que vimos en nuestra clase de medios cívicos al contexto de Costa Rica. No es una investigación rigurosa que quiere sacar conclusiones específicas sobre las observaciones, sino más bien, quiere ser una mirada general para poder ejemplificar un poco cómo es que se han ido usando las diferentes comunicaciones en mi país. Al mismo tiempo, como yo también trabajo en un medio en Costa Rica (Amauta) y mantengo conexiones con algunos de los medios que examinamos, la investigación en cierta medida ha sido introspectiva, convirtiéndome también en sujeto del estudio. Así, soy otra voz más opinando sobre el panorama, y en ningún momento intento ser objetivo.

This is a collaborative blog post between Hailey Lee and I about our final project for CMS.360, Intro to Civic Media. Our project is entitled “Television Newsroom Diversity and Civic Engagement.”

Abstract

This collaborative blog post summarizes the project Ricarose Roque and I have been working on for the Introduction to Civic Media class (CMS 860).

Abstract