The Center for Transformative Media is thrilled to announce four recipients for our inaugural mini-grant research awards.

This award grants up to $2,500 for tenure-track faculty and post-docs currently working at Northeastern.

Award winners were selected based on clarity, significance, originality, methodology, design, relationship to the Center’s mission, timeline, and budget.

Learn more about the winners and their projects below:

Myojung Chung, “Bridging Algorithmic Literacy Gaps for a Fairer Digital Landscape”

Algorithmic literacy—the ability to understand how algorithms curate and distribute information—is crucial for safeguarding user autonomy, fostering public dialogue, and upholding democratic values. However, it remains unevenly distributed, with marginalized populations often having lower levels of algorithmic literacy (Cotter & Reisdorf, 2020). As a result, those with limited algorithmic literacy may be more vulnerable to misinformation and face greater challenges in making informed decisions in the digital landscape.

This project seeks to address this growing form of digital inequality and promote a more equitable digital environment. Expanding my preliminary research on algorithmic knowledge gaps (Chung, 2024; Chung & Wihbey, 2024) and the current collaboration with the Applied Social Media Lab at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society to develop an algorithmic literacy education app, this study focuses on three key research objectives:

1. Examine the current state of algorithmic literacy gaps across diverse
   sociodemographic groups.
2. Analyze the interconnections between the cognitive, emotional, and
   behavioral dimensions of algorithmic literacy.
3. Develop inclusive, solution-oriented strategies to enhance algorithmic
   literacy for all users.

Sofia Bosch Gomez, “A Networked Repository of Public Sector Design in Latin America”

Design practices are increasingly recognized as valuable tools for addressing complex public sector challenges. However, their adoption within Latin American
public sector innovation units remains sporadically documented, limiting both
scholarly analysis and institutional learning.

This research project seeks to bridge this gap by developing a Networked Repository of Public Sector Design in Latin America, offering a comprehensive and systematic approach to mapping and documenting design-driven initiatives in the region.

This project aims to create a participatory methodology in which we engage experts, scholars and practitioners in Latin America with the aim creating an open repository that captures the multilingual literature review, case studies, and a visual network of design practices, offering an unprecedented overview of the field. Building on the review of the state of the art, the project will further engage practitioners and scholars across Latin America by leveraging deliberative democracy tools such as Pol.is to facilitate online convenings. These convenings will foster dialogue, generate collective insights, and refine the repository’s structure to better reflect the evolving landscape of public sector design.

Clareese Hill, “The Black Boston Dream Oracle”

The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book by Chloe Russel, a 19th-century text written by a Black woman from Massachusetts. According to a 1993 study analyzing Black life in the West End during the 1800s by the esteemed ancestor and Boston-based sociologist Adelaide Cromwell, Russel owned property in Boston’s West End and is recognized as one of just six Black women property owners in the area during that period. The authorship of Russel’s Dream Book remains shrouded in mystery, with many questions surrounding who it was written for and if she actually wrote it or was her identity instrumentalized as a mystic authority.

Drawing from Hill’s research, this reimagining seeks to reinterpret the dream prescriptions through the lens of African American folktales and West African griot traditions—narrative practices Russel may have been influenced by. The Black Boston Dream Oracle will be an AR walk through the West End with stops at Otis House, Maria Stewart’s home, The Home for Ageing Colored Women, and Hayden House. At each location, an oracle griot will conjure their provocation from a speculative future reality informed by a fragmented pass. The experience will be available on most smartphones and will be accompanied by a research document designed for educational purposes.

Eileen McGivney, “Participatory Design of Educational Virtual Reality”

As VR becomes more affordable and accessible, many have seen its potential for education (Pimentel et al., 2022). However, few initiatives from the technology industry go beyond simple gimmicks, and there is a dearth of educational content that educators can integrate into their curricula. For example, when launching their $150 million immersive learning initiative, Meta asked “what if you could learn anything, just by bringing it closer?” (Facebook, 2021), only highlighting what the technology can do without substantive thought to pedagogy or meaningful learning goals.

For VR to live up to its transformative potential in education, it will take a more thoughtful and grassroots design process to leverage the technology’s affordances to address challenges teachers and learners face in the classroom. This project addresses this need by engaging teachers in a participatory design process for developing a STEM education VR application.

The ultimate goal of this project is to build a VR field trip that can be easily used in classrooms for a transformative impact in STEM education. Following this participatory design process, we will conduct user testing with students, apply for larger grants to further the VR development, and ultimately study the application’s efficacy in classrooms.