Category Archives: updates

Today our Game Impact Project releases a new chapter, with some neat infographics. “Countering Four Risky Assumptions,” (PDF, 1.2mb) describes concrete steps to reduce the fragmentation in our field.

The full report on Impact with Games is also updated, based on feedback gathered over the past year. Today’s announcement comes at the Games for Change and Tribeca Games and Media Summit in NYC.

At last, more on the participatory design behind the “Mobile Voices/VozMob” project in Los Angeles is available online!  (VozMob gives day laborers in LA a platform to publish news and stories using ordinary cellphones; it was the basis of the Vojo service now at MIT.)

Specifically, this article investigates “power and participation” in creating this mobile platform for social justice.  Here are the details:

Participatory Design of a Mobile Platform for Social Justice: Reflections on Power and Participation in the Mobile Voices Project

by Melissa Brough, Charlotte Lapsansky, Carmen Gonzalez, Benjamin Stokes, and François Bar

EXTENDED ABSTRACT:  Given the emphasis in Participatory Design (PD) on the democratization of technology design and empowerment of users, PD has potential to contribute to the development of communication systems for social justice. Despite the growing significance of mobile technologies, especially within marginalized communities, there are few explorations of the application of PD to mobile communication technologies.

This case study analyzes efforts at participatory design in creating the Mobile Voices (VozMob) mobile platform, which was designed with and for immigrant workers and organizers. Through the VozMob platform, participants use basic mobile phones to publish online multimedia stories about their lives and their social justice efforts.

Through collective visualization methods, observation, and interviews, this study investigates user participation in the design of VozMob and the factors that enabled or hindered meaningful participatory design. Significant differences emerged between participants’ experiences of the design process, including: whether they experienced the development of the platform as technology ‘appropriation’ or technology ‘design’; and differences in the types and degrees of power-sharing in collaborative processes.

These findings have particular import for future efforts to develop communication technology projects that seek to advance social justice through participatory design, particularly for projects that incorporate emerging mobile technologies.

Key words: participatory design, appropriation, mobile media, social justice, digital storytelling, collective analysis, communication technology, popular education, digital media and learning

Our preprint (2mb PDF) is finally available, following some delays in publishing with the International Journal of Learning and Media.  Full release is expected later this year.

Our research is out on the civic lives of e-sports and small-group gamers. Based on a large study of League of Legends players, this piece was co-authored with Dmitri Williams in the journal Games and Culture.

Title: “Gamers Who Protest: Small-Group Play and Social Resources for Civic Action.”  (For those without library access, here is a PDF of the uncorrected proofs.)

Abstract:

Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world’s most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help some players to retain social resources. Using models of civic voluntarism, the attitudes and behaviors of more than 9,000 gamers were investigated. Gamers were shown to have relatively typical civic lives, except for unusually high rates of peaceful protest. Which gamers protest? As predicted, models for protest improved when considering how players approach their gaming (including recruiting and collaboration preferences). Dispelling some civic fears, there was no evidence that video games distracted from civic life when played in moderation. The findings support an emerging notion of protest as a playful and “expressive” civic mode.

Know an aspiring scholar with an interest in games and communication theory?  Here at the AU School of Communication we are looking for people with an interest in persuasive play, games that help journalists to communicate about complex policy issues, and much more.  Send them our way.

The deadline to submit applications is December 15th, 2015!

Key benefits:

• Location in DC is ideal for games (and game studies) tied to policy issues, global NGOs, national funders, politics, think tanks, (etc.!)
• Games is a strategic growth area at AU, with several tenure line faculty hires in the past two years, and a new degree in Game Design (MA) that launched just last year
• Accelerated program – finish your PhD in as little as three years

Check out:

1. Our game research areas — still emerging!
2. The PhD program in Communication Studies — which is where the PhD is officially housed
3. If you do apply, make sure to be in touch with our faculty at the AU Game Lab so they can look for your submission

(Above is our newly-renovated McKinley Building, where the Communication Studies division is located; a new building for our game design studio is also under construction.)

We have a fun paper out this month on “neighborhood acupuncture” in the Journal of Urban Technology. The broader special issue was on urban acupuncture, described by the editors as: “a localized intervention or treatment… used for the revitalization and (re)creation of a city by targeting strategic points, poking or activating networks into action.”

Co-authors: George Villanueva, François Bar, and Sandra Ball-Rokeach.

Abstract:

A delicate touch is required to empower neighborhoods using civic media. Funding is persistently scarce. Especially in marginalized neighborhoods, blunt designs can be counterproductive and even entrench complex problems. New metaphors may be needed to guide design and empower local neighborhoods. Urban acupuncture is used as the basis for this study, emphasizing a light-touch strategy that has shown success in Brazil with urban transit, and more recently in Europe with urban design. We specifically propose “neighborhood acupuncture” to address the local level, tapping the sociology of place-based communication. To investigate the implications for systematic design, a case study is probed in South Los Angeles using mobile media for community mapping. Using qualitative methods, three tactics were investigated for the potential to “poke” the network into action, including one to bridge diverse storytelling networks. Each tactic ultimately seeks to build the capacity for collective action around neighborhood issues. Acupuncture is broadly argued to sustain two design shifts: first to help approach neighborhoods as ecosystems, and second, to design for circulation rather than any single technology platform.

Continue reading →

Here’s a video of our webinar yesterday with Connected Learning TV. Panelists were: Nichole Pinkard, S. Craig Watkins, Henry Jenkins, Mimi Ito, and me. Our hosts and organizers were the amazing Sangita Shresthova, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Andrew Slack. Premise:

How can reflecting on histories of DML inform our thinking for the future?

…a conversation… on the early days of the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub and the annual DML Conference, which began six years ago. By recounting the histories of DML, participants hope to surface new paths forward; they’ll also discuss the #DML2055 component of this year’s conference, a futures-oriented experience for all attendees.

This webinar is part of a May 2015 series titled Equity by Design: A DML 2015 Showcase, in which themes from the 2015 Digital Media and Learning conference are highlighted.

I just discovered this short (3 min) video from our panel earlier this year on “Impact Design.” I’m increasingly on a mission to help reclaim assessment, including to improve quality, shift power relations and increase impact. The focus was on documentary film and impact media at the Media That Matters conference in DC:

My co-panelists were Brigid Maher (moderator and director of “Mama Sherpas”), Dana Chinn (Media Impact Project), and Luisa Dantas (Land of Opportunity). I hear echoes of this conversation in educational games, civic media and community journalism.

For more, see all videos from the conference.

I’ve co-authored a new report on Impact with Games: A Fragmented Field, along with Games for Change and the Michael Cohen Group.  From our abstract:

This is the first report in a series on game “impact types.” We begin with the problem. Our field needs a better way to talk about impact — a deeper conversation that is more fundamentally inclusive and multidisciplinary, yet still evidence-based. This report is a first step, revealing the basic fragmentation and documenting its harm.

Inside we reveal five types of fragmentation, each pointing to specific opportunities to improve the coherence of our field.  Specifically:

Read and download the full report on the project website: http://GameImpact.net

Related:

• On the DML Research Hub, I blogged: “Game Impact: New Report on Field Cohesion“
• Games for Change invited the community to “Help Us Build the Social Impact Games Field” on their website
• Coverage from the Games and Learning Hub on “New Effort Aims to Redefine, Better Measure the Impact of Games”
• Pictures from the soft-launch of the report are here.

Continue reading →

I’m thrilled to be hosting a session next week at the Games for Change Festival in NYC on reclaiming evaluation to empower artists and our audience. Fellow panelists include:

• Caty Borum Chattoo — Center for Media and Social Impact (CMSi) at American University
• Katherine Isbister –– Game Innovation Lab at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering
• Colleen Macklin — PETLab at Parsons, The New School for Design

Official description:

Can we reclaim evaluation to better empower artists, our audience, and marginalized voices? What tricks of impact design can filmmakers borrow from games and vice versa? This session taps experts in ‘impact design’ who are trying new ways to maximize impact. A key focus is on shifting the hidden power relations inherent in assessment, to develop approaches that increase creativity (not stifle it). Seeking to democratize assessment and optimize it as a tool for quality rather than judgment, the panel will highlight several ambitious assessments and provide tips for teams and the field.

Join us Tuesday April 21st, 2015 at 11:15am!

With our team at the Leimert Phone Company, I have a new article in the Journal of Community Informatics.

Using a case study of our “payphone redesign” project, we propose a model for how to plan a technology — not just design one.  For more, see our announcement of the article or the article itself (free). Full citation:

Stokes, B., Bar, F., Baumann, K., & Caldwell, B. (2014). Neighborhood Planning of Technology: Physical Meets Digital City from the Bottom-Up with Aging Payphones. Journal of Community Informatics: Special Issue on Community Informatics and Urban Planning, 10(3). [abstract or full article]