Jeremy Beaudry
Projects, Research & Texts

Social Media for Social Change

2008- / Philadelphia, USA

Social Media for Social Change is a design research project that investigates how networked technologies and social media may be used to create hybrid public spaces — bridging the physical and the virtual — where civil discourse and meaningful democratic participation are facilitated, organized, and nurtured at a grass-roots level. If communities (and, by proxy, public spaces for civil discourse) are formed around shared values that engender mutual respect and a sense of common cause, then our work must explore how social media and networked technologies can bridge the divide between disparate, multiple, often competing, perspectives in the public sphere.

We ask the question: How can we reimagine civil discourse in the context of social media and networked communication? There are many assumptions about how the internet and social media facilitate democracy and interaction. This project aims to break down some of these assumptions and test them out in controlled environments so that we can better understand how to create space for real civic discourse. SMSC is collaboration between The Action Mill and me along with undergraduate students (Ona Krass, Hunter Augeri, and Alie Thomer) from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Initial funding for SMSC is provided by the Philadelphia Applied Research Project within the College of Media and Communication at The University of the Arts.

Learn more about the project at the SMSC blog.