social networks

Social networks, or online communities, in the context of civic media work are web sites organized to enable individuals to connect with one another and to share information, photos, videos, and personal reflections.

Our projects

Lost in Boston

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Lost in Boston is a general-purpose web tool that cities can use to get citizens involved in civic improvement projects.


How might communities use it?
Citizens can submit their ideas for the most poorly marked intersections in Boston. Their submissions can contain photographs, video, and other supporting media. Citizens vote on what intersections are in most need of attention. They contribute suggestions for improving the signage at intersections in the form of drawings, etc. and can vote on those suggestions as well. Sponsors sign on to pay for improving the intersections voted most in need, in exchange for placement on signs and/or on the web, and using sponsor funds, the city, perhaps in partnership with other groups, fabricates the new signs and puts them in place.

At what stage of development is it?
Recently proposed, we are currently in meetings with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and local government officials. The first sign was recently installed on the grounds of MassArt, at 821 Huntington Ave.

Project team: 
Rick Borovoy

Redink

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RedInk is personal finance software with a social conscience.


How might communities use it?
The website (in development) provides constituencies with tools to collectively measure the effect of their economic power as it relates to specific industries and businesses, while maintaining privacy for individual users. Up until now, accounting of this nature has been vague or unavailable. More accurate spending data will be a valuable lever for organizations involved in collective action, collective bargaining, and fundraising.

At what stage of development is it?
Redink is in early development.

Project team: 
Ryan O'Toole

Sourcemap

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Sourcemap is a social network built around supply chains, enabling collective engagement with where things come from and what they are made of.


How might communities use it?
An open-source project, Sourcemap provides resources for calculating the carbon footprint and geographic spread of various products and services, including consumer electronics, travel, and food.

At what stage of development is it?
We are deploying Sourcemap through in-depth case studies with designers and business owners in product design, hospitality, and food and drink. The Sourcemap team is actively seeking collaborators and pilot study participants to develop the tool for general use.

Other collaborators: David Zwarg and Hiroshi Ishii

Project team: 
Leo Bonanni
Project team: 
Matthew Hockenberry

Between the Bars

Between the Bars is a blogging platform for one out of every 142 Americans---prisoners---that makes it easy to blog on paper, using standard postal mail. It consists of software tools to make it easy to upload PDF scans of letters, crowd-sourced transcriptions of the scanned images, and the usual full-featured blogging tools including comments, tagging, RSS feeds, and notifications for friends and family when new posts are available.


How might communities use it?
We are designing this system for prisoners in the US, a growing population that is routinely denied access to broadcast media. We hope that prisoners will be able to use this platform to tell their stories, to maintain social connections to the outside world, and to retain a sense of identity and humanity through the process of their incarceration.

Source code will be freely available in a public repository, as well as documentation on how to use the code.

At what stage of development is it?
Early code available on local server; networking with prisons still in early stages.

Next steps include:

* Finishing the core functionality of the code and to improve the visual presentation of the site
* Networking with local prisoner support organizations who can help evaluate the design and connect us to initial users (expected to be accomplished within 6 months)
* Bringing the site live to the general public (expected by year's end).

Project team: 
Benjamin Mako Hill
Project team: 
Charlie DeTar

Old and New Media: Converging During the Pakistan Emergency

This is a research paper that addresses the knowledge gap about new media and democracy in the developing world, examines how digital technologies – such as cellphones and live internet streams – and new media platforms – including blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook – were used to access information, organize political action, generate hyperlocal news reports, and promote citizen journalism during the "Pakistan Emergency," a period of heightened political instability between March 2007 and February 2008.

Project team: 
Huma Yusuf

Community Partners & Projects

Crossroads Charlotte

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Crossroads Charlotte provides opportunities for organizations, institutions and individuals to examine four plausible possible futures for the Charlotte community and then to take action to steer the community towards positive aspects of those futures.

Youth Map

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In a project funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service, students (and others) are invited to put nodes and links on a graphical map of Boston's organizations, issues, and people. This map becomes a resource for research, volunteering, recruitment, and activism. It will also be accessible via Facebook and MySpace applications.

DOTCOM: Inspire Civic Action through Social Media

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DOTCOM is a program for media-savvy and civically-engaged youth, designed to offer training and opportunities for young people to create socially conscious media that will impact communities across the U.S. and the Caucasus. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, and supported

Banyan Project

The Banyan Project is a group of senior journalists, technologists, researchers, strategists and advocates for strengthening democracy who are devoted to creating a new large-scale model for quality journalism that can thrive in the digital future.

Tom Stites, founder and moderator; see Advisory Board at http://www.banyanproject.com.

People's Voice Media

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People’s Voice Media is a new and innovative social enterprise, based in Manchester UK that works in local communities. We believe in the power of social media to get communities talking to each other, to spread news, and to give everyone a voice and a platform from which to use that voice. We offer a range of services that offer a complete package of media development opportunities, primarily to people living in digitally excluded communities.

Welcoming America

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Welcoming Incorporated is a grassroots collaborative that utilizes direct community dialogue as well as communications technology to promote understanding and respect between "arriving" immigrants and "receiving" communities in towns and cities across the United States. In Welcoming communities, underlying tension and misunderstanding between groups is gradually replaced by acceptance and cooperation.The ultimate goal of the collaborative is the development of a full-fledged welcoming movement, in which immigrants across the world feel welcomed in the places where they choose to live. There are currently twelve states in which significant Welcoming campaigns are currently underway.

New School Student Ambassadors

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The Project will provide an international project-based participatory learning experience that:

  • Improves language and media literacy skills
  • Enhances cross-cultural creativity and innovation by developing critical thinking skills
  • Focuses on 21st century collaboration and communication skills
  • Builds story telling, persuasion, and presentation skills for US and Chinese students
  • Project-based educational programs will be delivered to teams that combine Chinese and US students through online, interactive environments making maximum use of social media, social production, collaboration, and communication (text, audio, video) tools. New School Student Ambassadors has fully developed and piloted joint US-Chinese participatory learning, project-based programs using open source course management, electronic portfolios, and activity management systems. Through a network of collaborating professionals and organizations, we support teacher/coaching professional development in both China and the US.

    Campaign for the .nyc TLD

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    As the Internet becomes central to civic, commercial, community, and cultural life, those with the best tools and understanding of its capabilities will prosper. Using research, education, training, and outreach, Connecting.nyc Inc.'s mission is to prepare the city for our networked future. To do so, we will use the .nyc TLD (like .com or .org but just for New York City) to plan, to organize, and to empower New York City's residents, institutions, and businesses to better connect with one another and the world.

    The opportunity to acquire the .nyc TLD will arise in 2009.

    Buy It Like You Mean It

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    Our Mission: “To provide access to collaborative tools for educational discovery and communication about the real world impact of product supply chains.”

    Without knowing the socially responsible impact of purchasing a product, we’re all still shopping in the dark.

    Together we are modeling how specific companies perform on a variety of socially responsible interests. Buy It Like You Mean It helps students and volunteers cooperate to review and rate the real world effects of industry supply chains. We provide these ratings, free of charge, to help shoppers decide which products support their own unique values. Our users will soon be able to find a chocolate product scores through text messaging.

    Recent blog posts, discussions, and resources