shadows-streets-book

4 Introductionwith community organizers inspired me to undertake research that mighthelp movement participants, organizers, and scholars better understandthe shifting relationship between the media system and social movements.I participated in or led more than one hundred hands-on mediaworkshops using popular education and participatory design approaches,conducted forty formal semistructured interviews, took part in dozens ofactions and mobilizations, and assembled an archive of media producedby the movement. Some of the research that led to this book took placein partnership with community-based organizations (CBOs), some didnot. A full description of the methods I employed can be found in theappendixes to this book.In general, my work falls under the rubric of participatory research, aterm subsuming a set of methods that emphasize the development of communitiesof shared inquiry and transformative action. 11 In other words, Iconsider the groups and individuals I work with to be coresearchers andcodesigners, rather than simply subjects of research or test users. As anengaged scholar, media-maker, and technologist, I have used these methodsto work with youth organizers, the global justice movement, the Indymedianetwork, antiwar activists, media justice and communication rightsadvocates, LGBTQ and Two-Spirit communities, Occupy Wall Street, workercenters, and the immigrant rights movement, among others. In some casesI identify as a movement participant, in others as an ally. I ’ m a white,male-bodied, queer scholar/media-maker/activist with U.S. citizenshipwho grew up in Ithaca, New York. In my teen years I lived in Puebla,Mexico, during the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA (the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement) and neoliberalism. I went to Harvard as an undergraduate,organized raves and electronic arts events with the ToneburstCollective, became involved in youth organizing in the Boston area, gotconnected to the global justice movement through the Indymedia network,produced movement films, and took my first job as a community artsworker in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I went to graduate school at the Universityof Pennsylvania, then focused on media policy advocacy for several yearswith Free Press. I then moved to L.A. to pursue a doctorate at the AnnenbergSchool for Communication & Journalism at the University of SouthernCalifornia and became deeply involved in the immigrant rightsmovement. I ’ m now assistant professor of civic media in the ComparativeMedia Studies/Writing Department at MIT. I work to leverage my race,