MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

The fragmenting audiences and proliferating channels of contemporary television are changing how programs are made and how they appeal to viewers and advertisers. Some media and advertising spokesmen are arguing that smaller, more engaged audiences are more valuable than the passive viewers of the Broadcast Era. They focus on the number of viewers who engage with the program and its extensions -- web sites, podcasts, digital comics, games, and so forth. What steps are networks taking to prolong and enlarge the viewer's experience of a weekly series? How are networks and production companies adapting to and deploying digital technologies and the Internet? And what challenges are involved in creating a series in which individual episodes are only part of an imagined world that can be accessed on a range of devices and that appeals to gamers, fans of comics, lovers of message boards or threaded discussions, digital surfers of all sorts? In this forum, producers from the NBC series Heroes will discuss their hit show as well as the nature of network programming, the ways in which audiences are measured, the extension of television content across multiple media channels, and the value that producers place on the most active segments of their audiences.

The fragmenting audiences and proliferating channels of contemporary television are changing how programs are made and how they appeal to viewers and advertisers. Some media and advertising spokesmen are arguing that smaller, more engaged audiences are more valuable than the passive viewers of the Broadcast Era. They focus on the number of viewers who engage with the program and its extensions -- web sites, podcasts, digital comics, games, and so forth. What steps are networks taking to prolong and enlarge the viewer's experience of a weekly series? How are networks and production companies adapting to and deploying digital technologies and the Internet? And what challenges are involved in creating a series in which individual episodes are only part of an imagined world that can be accessed on a range of devices and that appeals to gamers, fans of comics, lovers of message boards or threaded discussions, digital surfers of all sorts? In this forum, producers from the NBC series Heroes will discuss their hit show as well as the nature of network programming, the ways in which audiences are measured, the extension of television content across multiple media channels, and the value that producers place on the most active segments of their audiences.

A generation of scholars, critics and political leaders has denounced videogames as at best a distraction and at worst a negative influence on society. Yet for a growing generation of activists and researchers, games may also represent a resource for engaging young people with the political process and heightening their awareness of social issues. In what ways do young people use the online societies constructed in multiplayer games to rehearse and refine skills at citizenship? Can we imagine games as a medium that encourages public awareness and citizenship? And what might it mean to empower young people to create their own games to reflect their perceptions of the world around them? This is the second in a continuing series from the new MIT Center for Future Civic Media.

A generation of scholars, critics and political leaders has denounced videogames as at best a distraction and at worst a negative influence on society. Yet for a growing generation of activists and researchers, games may also represent a resource for engaging young people with the political process and heightening their awareness of social issues. In what ways do young people use the online societies constructed in multiplayer games to rehearse and refine skills at citizenship? Can we imagine games as a medium that encourages public awareness and citizenship? And what might it mean to empower young people to create their own games to reflect their perceptions of the world around them? This is the second in a continuing series from the new MIT Center for Future Civic Media.

A conversation about the theory and practice of collective intelligence, with emphasis on Wikipedia, other instances of aggregated intellectual work and on recent innovative applications in product development for both large and small businesses. Thomas Malone, founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, will anchor the discussion.

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also the founder and director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and author of the book The Future of Work. Malone has published over 75 articles, research papers, and book chapters and is an inventor with 11 patents.

A conversation about the theory and practice of collective intelligence, with emphasis on Wikipedia, other instances of aggregated intellectual work and on recent innovative applications in product development for both large and small businesses. Thomas Malone, founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, will anchor the discussion.

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also the founder and director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and author of the book The Future of Work. Malone has published over 75 articles, research papers, and book chapters and is an inventor with 11 patents.

Media strategist and author of Fundamentals of Television Branding and Marketing Lee Hunt presents recent innovations in television branding and discusses some of the struggles being faced by networks in the era of convergence and transmedia.

Media strategist and author of Fundamentals of Television Branding and Marketing Lee Hunt presents recent innovations in television branding and discusses some of the struggles being faced by networks in the era of convergence and transmedia.

In Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam wrote about a generation of Americans cut off from traditional forms of community life and civic engagement, passive consumers of mass media. But others have noted the expansion of participatory cultures and virtual communities on the web, the growth of blogs, podcasts, and other forms of citizen journalism, the rise of new kinds of social affiliations within virtual worlds. What lessons can we learn from these online worlds that will make an impact in the communities where we work, sleep, and vote? What new technologies and practices offer us the best chance of revitalizing civic engagement? This forum marks the launch of the new MIT Center for Future Civic Media, a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program and is the first in a series of events designed to focus attention on the relationship between emerging media and civic engagement. The center has been funded by a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation. Its directors will be Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Mitchel Resnick of the Media Lab and Henry Jenkins of CMS.

In Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam wrote about a generation of Americans cut off from traditional forms of community life and civic engagement, passive consumers of mass media. But others have noted the expansion of participatory cultures and virtual communities on the web, the growth of blogs, podcasts, and other forms of citizen journalism, the rise of new kinds of social affiliations within virtual worlds. What lessons can we learn from these online worlds that will make an impact in the communities where we work, sleep, and vote? What new technologies and practices offer us the best chance of revitalizing civic engagement? This forum marks the launch of the new MIT Center for Future Civic Media, a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program and is the first in a series of events designed to focus attention on the relationship between emerging media and civic engagement. The center has been funded by a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation. Its directors will be Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Mitchel Resnick of the Media Lab and Henry Jenkins of CMS.