Introduction to civic media

"Civic media is any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents." — MIT Center for Civic Media

Lecture: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

This course examines civic media in comparative, transnational and historical perspectives. We will explore various theoretical tools, research approaches, and project design methods. Students will engage with multimedia texts on concepts such as citizen journalism, transmedia activism, media justice, and civic, public, radical, and tactical media. Case studies focus on civic media across platforms (print, radio, broadcast, internet), contexts (from local to global, present-day to historical), and use (dialogic, contentious, hacktivist). As a final project, students develop a paper, case study, or civic media project design. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20 students.

"The need for a 21st century freedom discourse is paramount. The Obama campaign proved that the connection of media technology and organizing holds much promise for constructing electoral movements. Now, how can that technology help us construct new spaces for black and other subaltern voice? Which tools and platforms will help collective deliberation and debate, not just aggregate or pass on information? What venues and mechanisms will aid formation of political identities of dispersed and despised groups? How can these groups find opportunities for speech back to the majority?" — Dayna Cunningham

Students who complete Introduction to Civic Media will be able to:

In addition to reading and in-class discussion, participants in this course will work together intensively thro ghout the semester to develop a shared practice of real-time collaborative note-taking, writing & editing, and public participation in debates about civic media via the course blog. We'll also share links via Twitter using the #civicmedia hashtag.

Learning activities include:

All participants in the course are expected to post regular blog entries on a publicly accessible site (the course blog). You may, however, choose to remain anonymous (actually, pseudonymous) by publishing under a pseudonym not easily linkable to your real name.

Plagiarism - use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement - is a serious offense. It is the policy of the CMS Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted (or linked). Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available in the Writing and Communication Center and the MIT Website on Plagiarism.

Project proposals due

Project Proposal workshop.

Fifth blog post due

Hands On: Local Ground

Sixth blog post due

Hands On: #hurricanehacking!

"There is no guarantee that networked information technology will lead to the improvements in innovation, freedom, and justice that I suggest are possible. That is a choice we face as a society. The way we develop will, in significant measure, depend on choices we make in the next decade or so." — Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.

Don't show me this again

This is one of over 2,200 courses on OCW. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.

MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.

No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.

Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.

Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)

Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare