The MIT Media Lab’s Civic Media group is no longer active. This site provides background on some of the people and projects that were associated with this research. The most current information about Media Lab research can be found in our Research section.
Media and technology are now core parts of civic and political engagement. We believe designing these digital tools and spaces for social change is itself an engaged practice. As a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies at MIT, the Center for Civic Media pursues original scholarship and design work that investigates the tight-knit and dynamic relationships between communities, ecologies of media and technology, and the natures of information and power. In particular, we develop research tools and conduct case studies to help us understand media ecosystems, augment civic participation, and foster digital inclusion; we use design methods informed by social justice to build technologies that amplify the voices of communities often excluded from the public sphere.