Center on Media Innovation for Social Impact

Shaping Just Futures With Media and Technology

Society’s greatest challenges — including climate change, racism, lack of faith in democratic institutions, public health skepticism, and gender inequality — are multidisciplinary and complex, and have developed over decades. How knowledge of these issues is shaped, and truth is established, are matters of communication. Clear, factual communication is important. But it’s not enough. Media messages gain legitimacy through emotions, social connections, computational and industrial manipulation, and any number of other mechanisms. Understanding how those mechanisms support just and democratic outcomes will require bold experimentation and rigorous evaluation.

The Center on Media Innovation for Social Impact (MISI) supports creative projects that support local impact on people’s lives and advance our global understanding of how media can work for people in movements, networks, and institutions. We do this through the formation of interdisciplinary teams that include communications practitioners and researchers, humanists, scientists, technologists, and community leaders. We adopt the framework of civic science, which at its most basic is a commitment to centering those most impacted in the shaping and use of scientific and political knowledge. 

MISI will prioritize collaboration with Boston area organizations. Working locally and sustaining long term relationships with the communities that have the most or gain from media innovation is a guiding principle.

We are actively recruiting faculty fellows, and student research and production assistants. If you are interested in getting involved, please reach out to the center director Eric Gordon ([email protected]).