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Gobo

Your social media. Your rules.Gobo is an experiment, not a startup. We’re building it to change the conversation on social media and imagin…

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A Co-Design Experience: Technologies for Rural Sustainability in Colombia | 2022 Edition

🚨Applications to the 2022 Co-Design Experience are now closed🚨OverviewThe development of technology in rural environments in Colombia is a…

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Private Location Data for the Public Good and Urban Understanding

There is a continuous and ubiquitous collection of precise, timestamped, geolocation data from apps and devices, being amassed by private f…

Some Bostonians feel largely unheard. With MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ portal now public, here’s a chance to really listen

A database of community conversations in various Boston neighborhoods launches publicly on Monday.

MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ campaign gives likely voters a voice in Boston’s race for mayor

Researchers enlist grassroots activists to engage “invisible” residents about the future of the city.

MIT experts test technical research for a hypothetical central bank digital currency

Collaboration with Federal Reserve Bank of Boston yields progress in understanding how a digital currency might be developed in the future.

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A Co-Design Experience: Technology Design for Coffee Production | 2019 Edition

🚨Application to the 2022 Co-Design Experience here bit.ly/codesign2022 🚨In the Civic Media and Space Enabled groups, we are explo…

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Better democracy through technology

Can machines make us better citizens and conversationalists? Deb Roy thinks so.

Systems scientists find clues to why false news snowballs on social media

A new model shows that the more polarized and hyperconnected a social network is, the more likely misinformation will spread.

Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar and collaborators receive Honorable Mention for paper at CSCW 2021

“Growing together, remaining apart: The role of digital technology in former guerrilla fighters’ social capital."

Growing Together, Remaining Apart: The Role of Digital Technology in Former Guerrilla Fighters' Social Capital

Debora de Castro Leal, Max Krüger, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Amparo Caicedo, Carlos Gómez, Dave Randall, and Volker Wulf. 2021. Growing Together, Remaining Apart: The Role of Digital Technology in Former Guerrilla Fighters' Social Capital. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 331 (October 2021), 24 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3476072

Participatory Sensemaking

How might we collect rich and complex data from community dialogues, analyze and make sense of that data? How might we design outputs …

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Research

PlusMinus

Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities

Moro, E., Calacci, D., Dong, X. et al. Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities. Nat Commun 12, 4633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24899-8

The Atlas of Inequality

Segregation is hurting our societies and especially our cities. But economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods. The restaurant…

CivilServant: User-led randomized trials online

The CivilServant project supports online communities to run their own experiments on the effects of moderation practices on antisocial beha…

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Defund Big Tech, Refund Community: Anti-Trust is Not Enough, Another Tech is Possible

Barendregt, W., Becker, C., Cheon, E., Clement, A., Reynolds-Cuéllar, P., Schuler, D., & Suchman, L. (2021). Defund Big Tech, Refund Community. Tech Otherwise. https://doi.org/10.21428/93b2c832.e0100a3f

Curriculum: Power + AI

Check out the project site here. The pursuit of justice in AI requires more than just tweaking the numbers. It requires us to “study up”—t…

Resilience Across Scales

Resilience Across Scales is a research theme that encompasses the work of a few Media Lab Principal Investigators and their research groups…

[bike] swarm

As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers, …

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Viral Vote

Climate change and the domino effect it creates will require coordination at scales we haven’t seen and new forms of organization to addres…

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Voter Education through Network Analytics

In “normal” times, the process of voting can be confusing enough for many Americans -- from whether and where they’re registered, to absent…

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Research

Design Fiction

Sparking discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies through design and storytelling

Literati CTO Finds “Tech for Good” in Boxes of Books

Civic Media alum Charlie DeTar talks to the MIT Alumni Association about his work with Literati, using technology for social good, and more.

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Streetchange

Computer vision uncovers predictors of physical urban change

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Algorithmic Justice League

www.ajl.orgAn unseen force is rising—helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This for…

Episode 89: Chelsea Barabas

Joshua B. Hoe interviews Chelsea Barabas of MIT about criminal justice monitoring, surveillance, and algorithms

City Science team wins Best Student Paper Award at Computing Conference 2020

Congratulations to City Science researchers Alex Berke, Jason Nawyn, Thomas Sanchez Lengeling, and group head Kent Larson!

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Moral Machine

The Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving car…

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AI researchers say scientific publishers help perpetuate racist algorithms

“This is why we keep seeing race science emerging time and again," writes Chelsea Barabas. "It’s because publishers publish it."

Contact Tracing Technologies: Methods and trade-offs

Alex Berke and Kent Larson, City Science group, MIT Media Lab (2020).

ChampScope

Virtual CityScope Champs-Élysées is an interactive and immersive platform that explores the future of Paris’ most important street.

Media Lab @ Design, Technology + Social Innovation Workshop 2020

The following Media Lab students joined the MIT India Initiative in Mumbai for this workshop.

Building a more honest internet

What would social media look like if it served the public interest?

Joy Buolamwini and Amanda Nguyen chosen for TIME 100 Next 2019

Congratulations to Joy Buolamwini and Amanda Nguyen for being recognized in the "Advocates" category.

Artificial intelligence can be biased. Here’s what you should know.

Joy Buolamwini talks to Frontline about bias in AI, and what can be done about it.

World's 100 most influential people in digital government 2019

Commending a formidable variety of international change-makers driving digital transformation in government.

Alum Erhardt Graeff receives Best Dissertation Award

The Association of Internet Researchers has recognized alum Erhardt Graeff, now an assistant professor of social and computer science at Ol…

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Empowerment-based design and evaluation of civic technology

Civic technology should empower us as citizens. But despite its breadth as a field, civic technology often takes its lead from Silicon Vall…

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Let's play: Waste at MIT

Let's play: Waste at MIT is a game about trash; it’s also a game about understanding civic infrastructure. This project explores the use of…

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Boycott!

A web browser extension that reveals less well-known aspects of corporate public behavior such as environmental respect and political bias.…

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RelatiVotey

Many people think their vote doesn't count—that a single vote would not change an election's outcome—and they stay home on Election Day. Ho…

CityScope PlayGround: MIT East Campus

This project depicts the design, deployment and operation of a Tangible Regulation Platform, a physical-technological apparatus made for th…

Face recognition researcher fights Amazon over biased AI

Joy Buolamwini talks to the AP about her work on algorithmic bias.

On recent research auditing commercial facial analysis technology

An open letter asking Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement agencies.

AI experts question Amazon’s facial-recognition technology

More than three dozen AI researchers have signed an open letter asking Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement agencies.

‘Atlas of Inequality’ maps where rich, poor do and don’t mix

Visiting professor Esteban Moro talks to Next City about the Atlas of Inequality.

'Atlas Of Inequality' shows income segregation around Boston

Esteban Moro talks to WBUR about the Human Dynamics group's Atlas of Inequality.

Visualizing where rich and poor people really cross paths—or don’t

These maps show “place inequality"—or why people of different income levels are at different coffee shops.

The 'Atlas of Inequality' maps micro-level segregation

MIT Media Lab’s new interactive “Atlas of Inequality” shows that “segregation is not just about where you live, but what you do."

Artificial intelligence has a problem with gender and racial bias. Here’s how to solve it.

Joy Buolamwini’s essay is featured in the Optimists issue of Time, guest-edited by Ava DuVernay.

Defense of Amazon's face recognition tool undermined by its only known police client

So far Amazon’s frontline defense against advocates and academics has been: Researchers are setting the search parameters incorrectly.

Amazon is pushing facial technology that a study says could be biased

Amazon’s system had more difficulty identifying the gender of female and darker-skinned faces than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.

Give way to droids, bots, and drones: the driverless city will look like this

An NYC exhibit imagines driverless buses and mobile medical units resembling Popemobiles.

Should we be worried about computerized facial recognition?

The technology could revolutionize policing, medicine, even agriculture—but its applications can easily be weaponized.

Capturing Challenges

MIT Media Lab professor Ramesh Raskar talks about how his high-tech inventions and initiatives can help solve real-world problems.

CityMatrix

An Urban Decision-Support System Augmented by Artificial IntelligenceThe decision-making process in urban design and urban planning is outd…

Tech community wrestles over working with government

Hiawatha Bray reports on the unrest bubbling up in the tech industry.

AR is transforming tech. What can it do for cities?

Cities need to work to ensure that AR makes the leap from “cool experience,” to a technology that improves residents’ lives.

Thesis Research

Evaluating Civic Technology Design for Citizen Empowerment

Graeff, Erhardt (2018). Evaluating Civic Technology Design for Citizen Empowerment. PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Mission Wildlife

Mission Wildlife is a research collaboration between San Diego Zoo Global and the MIT Center for Civic Media to explore the poten…

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Action Path

Action Path is a mobile app to help people learn about and engage with issues in their community. The app uses push notifications tied to g…

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