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Social Media for Everyday Democracy
Social media does not democracy make. While there are extraordinary examples during the Arab Spring, for example, of Facebook and Twitter enabling mass assembly and connecting local movements to the...
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Design Action Research for Government (DARG) Project (part 1 of 2)
I’m excited to talk about a new project. This description was written with my colleague Jesse Baldwin-Philippi. The Design Action Research for Government (DARG) project is a partnership between the...
View ArticleDesign Action Research for Government (DARG) project (part 2 of 2)
In addition to research oriented around projects, DARG is also engaged in some context-setting research on the changing face of government. Perceptions of new media amongst government officials The...
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Door-touching and civic virtue
Recently I spent a lot of time watching people walk in and out of the doors of the Forest Hills subway station in Boston. As people rushed out of the station during the afternoon commute, motivated by...
View ArticleWhat are civic actions?
In 2000, the sociologist Robert Putnam was unambiguous in his concern that the new World Wide Web was leading to the decay of civic engagement. People were simply spending too much time online and...
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Playful Civics
Last weekend, I had the honor of being on a plenary panel at MIT8 talking about publics and counterpublics in a networked context. My remarks focused on the idea of playful civics – or, how play can be...
View ArticleGoals of Play
Over the last year, we have discovered quite a lot about play. In our Community PlanIt research, in particular, we have seen that the simple framing of an “official process” as a game provides players...
View ArticleEngagement Games
Serious games are sometimes defined as games that have purposeful design – games that aim to teach, motivate, or persuade its players. They are mostly used in classrooms, for teaching content ranging...
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Why We Engage: How Theories of Human Behavior Contribute to Our Understanding...
For the last several years, the Engagement Game Lab has been doing research on the civic impacts of digital tools for democracy and community engagement. We have developed several games and tools and...
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Games versus Gamification in the Design of Systems for Social or Civic Action
In designing a game to address social or civic problems, there are always two parallel or conflicting goals: the goal of the game and the civic goal. The goal of the game is the prelusory goal, it...
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