CTM’s mission is three-fold. First, we strive to understand how people and communities use existing and emerging media technologies in transformative ways to improve their lives and shape more equitable technological futures. Second, we explore the many ways emerging media technologies transform society. Finally, we use our creative potential to develop more just and socially responsible sociotechnical futures.
What makes CTM distinctive is our commitment to critically investigating the intersection of media and creativity as a connected practice. We focus not only on how technologies are designed in labs and studios, but also how communities—especially marginalized groups—adapt and repurpose them in inventive and transformative ways. For example, we explore how people in situations of hardship creatively appropriate mobile technologies for survival and community building, we examine how LGBTQ+ communities navigate, resist, and are marginalized by AI-driven social media platforms, and we investigate how extended reality (XR) technologies can engage underrepresented students in STEM learning. This dual focus on top-down innovation and bottom-up creativity positions CTM at the heart of CAMD’s mission to harness data and emerging technologies to advance human potential and solve the challenges of the future.
Central to this work is our study of AI as media. Rather than viewing AI simply as a technical tool, we take a sociotechnical lens to explore how it operates as a transformative cultural force embedded in everyday mobile devices, urban infrastructures, and social media platforms. We critically investigate how AI reproduces and deepens existing inequalities—across race, class, gender, and geography—while also opening spaces for community empowerment and resistance. CTM foregrounds the voices and creative practices of communities in the majority world, where AI is experienced through mobile devices and informal infrastructures rather than corporate labs and research universities. This positions CTM as a unique complement to Northeastern’s broader AI ecosystem, alongside the technical and ethical approaches of other institutes. We pursue this work through international collaborations and partnerships with researchers, communities, and organizations across the globe, with particular emphasis on contexts beyond North America and Europe.
CTM is committed to ensuring that critical research reaches audiences beyond academia. We actively translate faculty scholarship into accessible public knowledge through media coverage, public talks, op-eds, and community reports — bridging academic research and community practice.
