Wednesday, March 30, 6:00PM
Yale Law School, faculty
lounge on
the second floor
New Haven, CT
RSVP to Bryan Choi
(bryan.choi at post.harvard.edu)
The "Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group" is a forum for fellows and affiliates of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Yale Law School Information Society Project, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to discuss their ongoing research.
This month's presenters will include:
Research, Service, and Ethics in contested spaces: How definitions can go wrong
Charlie DeTar, MIT
Abstract: Between the Bars is a blogging platform for prisoners created
by the MIT Center for Future Civic Media. The site, launched in
October, 2010, rapidly grew in popularity until it was suspended in
December due to regulations surrounding research involving prisoners.
This talk will describe the difficulty of navigating the regulatory
structures of prisons, universities, and review boards in the creation
of a politically contentious service project. Between the Bars will be
resuming service next month.
Charlie DeTar is a PhD candidate and researcher at MIT, and a
fellow at the Center for Future Civic Media. He studies the ways in
which technology can democratize traditional power relationships.
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Data integration and segregation: Profiling the poor online
Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Information Society Project, Yale Law School
Spurred by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, state,
civil society, and market actors are partnering to ensure that new
government funding helps build sustainable broadband infrastructures
that serve historically marginalized communities, particularly poor
communities. But, as poor communities are being brought online, what
are the ways in which their experiences are being constructed and
constrained through profiling technologies? As Gandy (2009, 2010)
argued, the collection, identification, categorization, processing, and
evaluation of individual user behavior has the potential to reinforce
and exacerbate social inequalities. Whether being categorized as “high
risk” consumers, served ads that prey on vulnerable viewers, or
targeted with tailored political campaign messages, low-income users
face potentially harmful scenarios when moving across the digital
divide. This work-in-progress considers the tensions between data
profiling practices and the larger goal of meaningful participation of
poor people in a digitally mediated society.
Seeta Peña Gangadharan (Ph.D., Stanford University) is a postdoctoral
fellow in the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. With a
focus on theories of media democracy and media justice, she examines
the intersections between civil society, communication practices, and
communication policies. Her work has appeared in the Journal of
Communication Inquiry and New Media & Society. She has edited two
collections, Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice and
Alternatives on Media Content, Journalism and Regulation. Gangadharan
received her B.A. from Stanford University and her M.Sc. from the
London School of Economics and Political Science.
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The Praxis of Digital Media: a project-based, service-learning approach
to Multimedia for Social Change
Sasha Costanza-Chock, Berkman Center Fellow & MIT Center for Future Civic Media
In 2010 and 2011, I created a service-learning course and multimedia workshop that partners USC undergraduates with community based organizations (CBOs) in Los Angeles to develop participatory media projects for social change. In the course, students work with CBOs to develop and implement a plan for a participatory media project, while blogging about the process and meeting in a weekly seminar to share, reflect upon, and workshop their project together with other students. This presentation will share some strategies and practices from the course, reflect on the challenges, and invite a conversation about how to integrate community partnerships into a critical pedagogy of media justice and communication rights.
Sasha Costanza-Chock is a researcher and media maker who works on the political economy of communication, community media, and the transnational movement for media justice and communication rights. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, as well as a Berkman Fellow. This fall, Sasha will be joining MIT's Comparative Media Studies department as Assistant Professor of Civic Media.
Last updated March 24, 2011