(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.

For a recent Civic Media Lunch, we welcomed the co-founder and radio coordinator from ZUMIX, Madeleine Steczynski and Elena Botkin-Levy. ZUMIX is a twenty-year-old East Boston-based nonprofit that builds community through music and the arts. Their core constituency is low-income youth -- picture a Boys and Girls Club filled with kids playing guitars and learning to use mixing boards...

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While you view our video below, read Ethan's rundown of our superb event, Mapping Media Ecosystems. It featured Hal Roberts, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; Erhardt Graeff, founding member of the Web Ecology Project; and Gilad Lotan, VP of Research and Development for SocialFlow:

I asked them to share some of the recent work they’ve been doing, understanding the structure of the US and Russian blogosphere, analyzing the influence networks in Twitter during the early Arab Spring events and understanding the social and political dynamics of hashtags. They didn’t disappoint, and I suspect our video of the session will be one of the more popular pieces of media we put together this fall.

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

VIDEO

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

FEATURED EVENTS

Events This Week

• "Mapping Media Ecosytems". Civic Media Session, Wednesday 5pm w/ Hal Roberts, Erhardt Graeff, Gilad Lotan cot.ag/uad5Sz
• Mitch Resnick joins us Thursday for free lunch (RSVP). "Launching Projects into the World": cot.ag/uwCU4G
• Join Nathan Matias, Matt Stempek, and Daniel Schultz at the Civic Media London Social Thu 3 Nov @ 6:00pm bit.ly/uUzVK6

Civic Videos and Podcasts

• Video: Civic Media Session: "Civic Maps" cot.ag/vwolZi
• Video: Ethan Zuckerman on "Networks Understanding Networks" cot.ag/tCdCFc
• Video: Benjamen Walker talks "Too Much Information" at our Civic Media Lunch: bit.ly/vKJvyv (Great example of "civic fiction" as a genre…)
• Podcast: "Surveillance and Citizenship" cot.ag/saThfE
• Molly Sauter interviewed by BBC4 about Anonymous and hacktivism cot.ag/vwfnHR (~13:50)

Laura Kurgan, Pablo Rey

Maps, Geographic Information Systems, and spatial analysis are powerful tools that recently have become increasingly accessible to non-specialists. Dynamic maps with user created content are becoming part of daily life in the 1/3 world (developed countries and elites in the global South). There is a long history of maps as tools for civic engagement, with public participatory GIS and community engaged mapping playing key roles in (for example) indigenous land rights struggles, mapping health disparities, and the environmental justice movement's demonstration of the unequal spatial distribution of pollution. Most recently, new tools and platforms like Open Street Maps and Grassroots Mapping are democratizing maps even further.

What challenges still constrain the effective creation and use of Civic Maps? What tools and platforms are most promising? What steps can developers, practitioners, and researchers take to help build the field of civic mapping?

Download or watch below.

Benjamen Walker is the host of the program "Too Much Information" a radio show (and podcast) about life in the information age. He reports on many of the issues and topics of the day (Wikileaks, Anonymous, online porn, surveillance, net neutrality) but he also throws in conspiracy theories, fiction and interviews with ordinary people trying to make sense of their digital selves.

Download 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...

Here's a quick summary of our progress on Aago, a mobile app for youth media creation and sharing. We are excited to start the fall term with new team members and engaged community partners!

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