natematias's blog | MIT Center for Civic Media

Writing Fiction Together: Ensemble, a Collaborative Storytelling System

Submitted by natematias on February 19, 2014 - 7:13pm

Can crowds write fiction together? Ensemble is a platform for massive participatory story writing, designed by Joy Kim, Justin Cheng, and Michael Bernstein. Here at the ACM Conference for Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Joy gave a talk about her system.

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Researching Makers: Hackerspaces, Repair, and Civic Hacking

Submitted by natematias on February 19, 2014 - 7:00pm

Today, Ricarose Roque and I attended a panel on "Making Cultures" at CSCW, the ACM's conference on computer supported cooperative work. Here are our notes.

Daniela Rosner starts out by setting the scene: Over the past decade, thousands of programmers, designers, and engineers have gathered at hacker spaces, co-labs, and makerspaces to rethink and recreate technologies in collaboration. They share beliefs about what technology should be designed to do, discussing how information should be shared, and how to design the worlds we want. Researchers are now starting to study these movements, asking what these spaces look like, what ways do their practices changes across these sites, and what values connect them with the wider world. This panel includes some of those researchers.

3 Findings on Data & Design for Civic Participation: Tracking Donations via Email, Action Brokering Platforms, Voting With Your Body

Submitted by natematias on February 19, 2014 - 12:02pm

I'm here at CSCW, the ACM conference for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (full publication list here). This morning, our session is on civic participation. Brian Keegan started out the session, introducing the three papers.

update feb 24: @EthanZ found glitches in the liveblog, which I have corrected by finishing a sentence and correcting the chart of donations per solicitation.

==Understanding Donation Behavior through Email==
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by Yelena Mejova, Venkata RK Garimella, Ingmar Weber, and Michael C Dougal of Yahoo Research

Pair Research: Low-Fi Tools for Collaboration In Teams

Submitted by natematias on February 12, 2014 - 3:45pm

Together with Brian Keegan, I facilitate the Berkman Center's Cooperation Working Group, a group of researchers and practitioners in the Boston area who support each other's research and share new ideas. This week, we were joined by Rob Miller, a professor and HCI researcher at CSAIL. Rob's group's work profoundly inspired my own research while at Microsoft, and I was delighted to welcome him.

The next Cooperation Group Meeting will be in two weeks, Tues Feb 25 at 5pm, where I will present work done in partnership with Sarah Szalavitz on gender bias in social media among journalists and bloggers. I'll share results of an experiment where we exposed people to the gender ratio of their behavior.

What is Pair Research?

High-Level Conferences on ICT and the Internet: What Do They Mean for the Internet As We Know It

Submitted by natematias on February 4, 2014 - 3:12pm


ICANN 47 Gala Dinner

I'm here at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society for a talk by Veni Markovski, ICANN vice-president for Russia, who's talking to us today about issues in Internet governance. (This post was written with Ethan Zuckerman and Tim Davies)

Ethan introduces Veni, who was very involved in building the Internet in Bulgaria, and who is now a leading expert on Internet governance and policy worldwide, with particular experience in Russia and former soviet countries. From early on, he has taken a great deal of involvement and responsibility for the complicated Internet governance issues that we all recognize are important, but can sometimes feel intimidating. He's a former ICANN board member, a former board member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

ICANN and Internet Governance

Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw on Internet Skills and Wikipedia's Gender Inequality

Submitted by natematias on January 21, 2014 - 1:14pm

Today at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw offered some fascinating new evidence on the gender gap in Wikipedia. Here's a vizThink by Willow Brugh from the talk:

Why You Should Apply To be a Berkman Fellow

Submitted by natematias on December 1, 2013 - 12:30pm

You should apply to be a Berkman Fellow next year, especially if you're a designer, computer scientist, or researcher of technology. There's one week remaining. Apply here.

If you haven't clicked on that link and started filling out the application, this blog post is for you. The official link has helpful information about qualifications, funding, and more. Here, I try to explain why makers, computational social scientists, and computer scientists should apply, even if you haven't finished your PhD.

I'm a Berkman Fellow for the 2013-2014 academic year. As a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, I'm deeply enjoying the opportunity. This post tells my story, explains what I'm doing now, and answers questions you might have about being a Berkman Fellow. You should also know that is not official advice, and I'm not on the selection committee.

Cultivating Habits for Social Good With Your Peers: TearFund's New Rhythms App

Submitted by natematias on November 17, 2013 - 3:23pm

Can small challenges and peer support help young people grow habits to become socially responsible people? That's the premise of Rhythms, a fascinating web and mobile app launched this May by TearFund, the UK Christian relief and development agency.


Nathan's avatar checks his privilege on Rhythms

The Changing Landscape of Digital Surveillance

Submitted by natematias on November 7, 2013 - 1:41pm

Governments are putting in massive work to crack communications. Many companies are working hard to create surveillance tools used by our governments and many others. Many service providers are vulnerable to these issues. What fixes can we make as designers of technology? Morgan Marquis-Boire joined us for lunch at the Center for Civic Media to share some ideas (this post was written with Willow Brugh).

 

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