(or, The Six-handed Liveblog)

When Nathan and Matt joined the Center for Civic Media in the fall of 2011, each had significant blogging experience. But we were to serve under Ethan Zuckerman and Sasha Costanza-Chock. Zuckerman is co-author of Tips for Livebloggers with Bruno Giussani, and he fervently believes in liveblogging all events. Sasha Costanza-Chock, a long time media activist, is also passionate about live, collaborative note-taking.

The Center hosts several public events each week, from guest lunches to evening forums to special events, and Ethan and Sasha quickly established a strong norm of liveblogging these events. Which is to say, they made it clear that we weren't just expected to attend these events, but to blog them. (They help. Sometimes.)

In my nearly four years here, I've seen the rise of some great solutions to communications challenges.

MailChimp and other email marketing platforms have made signing up and emailing friends and followers dead simple while avoiding the worst practices that lead to spamhood.

Twitter not only works as a broadcast medium but also makes rebroadcasting more respectable than it had been. (You think I'm kidding, but older professional communications folks still reflexively hesitate, wondering if featuring others' news weakens one's own brand or, worse, constitutes a copyright violation.)

Eventbrite helps manage ticketing and major event promotion without ever having to print out a spreadsheet, set up a cost object, or beg a former cop to help guard a cash box.

The last two days of the Truthiness conference, co-hosted by the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society and MIT's Center for Civic Media, exposed a rich cross-section of people, research, and applications dedicated to fighting misinformation in its many forms. We spent the day Tuesday discussing the wide world of facts and falsehoods, with an embarrassing collection of brains on hand to inform us on the history, cognitive psychology, and best practices of encouraging a healthy respect for reality. The challenge ahead, now that all the mini eclairs are gone, is to convert the goodwill, knowledge, and collaboration generated by this conference into a united front against delusion. Here's my pitch.

What's been the relationship between social media and social movement activity during the current global cycle of protest? Our own Sasha Costanza-Chock says it's time to find out...

Media Culture in the Occupy Movement From the People's Mic to GlobalRevolution.tv

Thursday 5pm @ MIT

Sasha Costanza-Chock is Assistant Professor of Civic Media in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, co-principal investigator of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and cofounder of the Occupy Research Network.

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Thanks to "The Crime Report" for their coverage of Charlie DeTar's Center project, Between the Bars:

Reentry and reform can take root when prisoners are able to maintain connections with their families and communities. One website is making great strides in building those bridges online.

BetweentheBars.org aims to humanize prisoners and open a dialogue between the millions of incarcerated Americans and the public. The site launched last year, growing out of work at the MIT Center for Civic Media by Charlie DeTar and others. It’s a refreshing initiative in a field that usually holds technology and communications at arm’s length.

DeTar’s site is a brilliant idea. Thanks to a recent redesign, it’s also a well-executed one. Between the Bars relies on the help of volunteers to scan posts from prisoners and post them directly to the web.

Here's your breakdown of news in civic media this week...

VIDEO

Mapping Media Ecosystems
Hal Roberts, Erhardt Graeff, and Gilad Lotan

FEATURED EVENTS

Hackasaurus is a great project by Mozilla which makes it easy to see the structure of a web page and remix it. In education, it's a great way to combine learning about composition with learning about how to make.

Today in the Media Lab's class on Technologies for Creative Learning, we met with Andrew Slack of the Harry Potter Alliance, an organisation which mobilises Harry Potter fans for social good. We also had a great conversation on the ideas of Henry Jenkins about participatory culture and participatory learning (for more, see this report by Jenkins funded by the MacArthur Foundation).