In our ongoing quest to trace the outline of the phrase "civic media," we began the Center for Civic Media's 2012 lunch series with Paul Wright, Editor and Cofounder of Prison Legal News, and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, the non-profit umbrella which publishes PLN.

(For MIT undergraduates only.)

With the increasing proliferation of mobile digital media tools and online video distribution, there is a need for secure easy-to-use platforms for sharing and organizing media content among youth. While capturing and tagging digital media with time and location is possible, editing and organizing it for producing seamless narrativesthat can be easily shared online remains complicated. This project seeks to undertake development of mobile tools and online platforms that support young media makers and citizen journalists to create, organize and share digital narratives produced in their own neighborhoods over time, while allowing new forms ofinter-generational learning, location-based storytelling and civicadvocacy.

(Download the full video or watch below.)

Center for Civic Media director Ethan Zuckerman during the Media Lab's fall meeting:

It's 2011. This is a year -- depending on how this year ends up -- that is going to be remembered perhaps as we remember 1989, 1968, perhaps 1848 as one of these years where the world as we know it changes fairly radically.

However, as Ethan showed in great detail using visualizations of automated news coverage analysis, these revolutions may well be events that much of the world missed...

Between the Bars has been busy in the last six months:

• We now have over 300 writers, and are regularly receiving 100 letters per week
• We've published over 1500 blog posts and profiles.
• We now have a paid part-time staff person, thanks to the Center for Civic Media's support, to help us with operations
• We've accrued a wait-list of over 500 additional writers in prison who want to blog - and we're working on growing our capacity to publish them as well.

This is still a far cry from the 2.3 million people in prison right now. So clearly, we have our work cut out for us!

So it is with this in mind that we're delighted to announce some major changes to the Between the Bars website! View them here: http://betweenthebars.org

Are you an MIT undergrad with a coding background and interest in media? Check out this great opportunity with the AAGO project:

UROP Positions: MIT Center for Civic Media and the Comparative Media Studies Program
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. James Paradis

Project Title:
Aago: Mobile Media Diaries for Youth Citizen Journalists