Research

Data systems, social networks, and algorithmic technologies can both promote and harm social justice efforts.

Research in this cluster critically examines how artificial intelligence and data-driven systems shape social problems and communities, attending to the power dynamics that emerge when AI operates as a cultural and media force.

Faculty investigate how communities resist, appropriate, and creatively engage with AI systems from the bottom up, while also analyzing the algorithmic bias, platform governance, and surveillance systems that shape and constrain their lives. Research spans social media networks, mobile AI applications, civic engagement, and community-driven approaches to data justice and algorithmic accountability.

For example, Rahul Bhargava’s Counterdata Network co-designs AI tools with human rights activists to monitor news for reports of violence and discrimination, while his Media Cloud builds infrastructure for tracking how stories circulate across platforms. Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki’s Epic Sock Puppet Theater exposes social media disinformation campaigns through animatronic installations that inoculate the public against harmful content. Michael Ann DeVito examines how LGBTQ+ communities navigate, resist, and are marginalized by AI-driven social media platforms, centering queer and trans voices in the study of algorithmic systems. Adriana de Souza e Silva’s Mobile AI project investigates how AI embedded in mobile devices and urban infrastructures shapes everyday life in low-income communities across the majority world, examining both algorithmic power and community resistance.

Urban spaces are increasingly shaped by networked technologies — from mobile platforms and algorithmic systems to participatory design tools and civic data infrastructures.

Research in this cluster examines how these technologies affect everyday life, mobility, and civic participation in cities, with particular attention to how marginalized communities navigate, resist, and reshape urban technological systems. 

Faculty work spans participatory design, urban informatics, mobility justice, and the creative appropriation of digital tools for community empowerment.

Current projects reflect this range. Working with community partners, Christopher Le Dantec co-creates computing systems that enable new forms of civic participation and assert community identity in urban spaces. An open-source digital toolkit developed by Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga, Drawing Participation enables local governments and community organizations to create their own participatory mapping and urban planning platforms. Zorana Matic examines how green infrastructure projects in gentrifying neighborhoods affect legacy residents, using data mapping to advocate for inclusive urban development. Through theater performances that make data about issues like gentrification accessible and participatory, Rahul Bhargava’s Civic Data Theater engages communities directly in conversations about urban change. Adriana de Souza e Silva’s Mobile Networked Creativity documents how marginalized communities globally use mobile technologies in inventive and transformative ways.

Games, play, and immersive media technologies are powerful cultural forms that shape how people learn, communicate, and experience the world.

Faculty work spans game design, virtual and extended reality, serious games, and the historical preservation of gaming as a cultural medium.

Research in this cluster examines games and immersive technologies both as objects of critical inquiry and as tools for social change — investigating how they can expand access to learning, foster community, and challenge existing inequalities, while also questioning their limitations and ethical dimensions.

Celia Pearce’s Games for Life examines the practices and benefits of play for older adults, challenging ageism in the videogame industry. Through participatory design processes, Eileen McGivney develops VR field trips that give underrepresented STEM students immersive learning experiences not possible in traditional classrooms. Meryl Alper’s XR Ethics for Neurodivergent Children investigates the ethical dimensions of immersive technologies for neurodivergent children and families, centering their voices rather than assuming technology is inherently beneficial. Adriana de Souza e Silva’s Retro Mobile Gaming Database preserves early mobile gaming history, documenting a cultural form largely overlooked by mainstream archives.

Digital technologies offer powerful new ways to preserve and share cultural memories, community histories, and the evolution of knowledge itself.

Research in this cluster focuses on creating digital archives, supporting grassroots storytelling, and developing new methods for documenting and sharing histories that might otherwise be lost — whether those are Indigenous place-based narratives, queer and trans community histories, the stories of elders from marginalized communities, or the emergence of entire academic disciplines.

For example, Elizabeth Solomon and Sarah Kanouse’s Native Spaces is a location-aware digital platform for sharing place-based audio narratives of Indigenous survival, resistance, and resurgence in Eastern Massachusetts. Caleb Gayle’s Baldwin-Emerson Elders Project similarly centers marginalized voices, preserving the histories of Black, Latine, Asian, Indigenous, and queer elders through a nationwide oral history initiative. Adriana de Souza e Silva’s Oral Histories of Mobile Communication documents the emergence of mobile communication as an academic discipline through video interviews with pioneering scholars, providing a formal historical record of the field’s development.

New technologies are fundamentally changing news production, information systems, and civic communication, with profound implications for democracy.

Research in this cluster focuses on developing innovative storytelling formats, supporting community media initiatives, using data-driven approaches for journalism with social impact, computational approaches to journalism, and efforts to fight misinformation while strengthening local news.

Faculty work spans local news sustainability, accessible media, content analysis, and the use of emerging technologies to hold power accountable and amplify underrepresented voices.

Dan Zedek’s Storybench empowers early-career journalists and students through a journal of digital and data journalism focused on media innovation as a tool for impactful storytelling. Dan Kennedy’s What Works: The Future of Local News brings together community news publishers to explore sustainable models for local journalism in an era of media consolidation. Through documentary storytelling, Jody Santos’s Disability Justice Project trains disabled human rights defenders to document and share their experiences, shifting dominant narratives around disability. Rahul Bhargava’s Content Audit Toolkit helps newsrooms algorithmically audit their content against their own mission statements, enabling more accountable and equitable editorial practices. Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki’s Going Viral uses AI-generated video to counter misinformation, illustrating how artistic and technological approaches can intersect in the fight for a healthier information ecosystem.