General

The Center for Media & Social Impact officially welcomes new co-directors Caty Borum Chattoo and Brigid Maher, who have both been actively involved in programming over the last year. You can rely on the same great programs and content you’ve come to love, including the 2015 Human Rights Film Series, the 2016 Media That Matters conference, field reports, and fair use guides, to name a few. You’ll also be hearing in coming months about exciting new projects in social documentary and media, impact assessment, production incubation projects and more.

Chattoo and Maher are both faculty members in the School of Communication at American University (AUSOC) with distinguished backgrounds in film production, social impact media, and social-change communication strategy. Read more...

How did the filmmakers for "Give Up Tomorrow" leverage the film for political action and justice for the film's subjects? Filmmaker Gemma Cubero's research shows how a film's engagement strategies are just as important as the film itself. Read more...

“Story drives everything,” says Felicia Pride, accomplished author turned transmedia extraordinaire. The Center enthusiastically welcomes Pride on board as a Media Fellow, bringing a wealth of experience in media storytelling starting with her days as publicist and author in New York to her most recent venture, Pride Collaborative in Washington, D.C. Read more...

Videography, Editing and Writing by Luke Taylor, Natalie Plumb, Bryan Bello and Kenneth Merrill

Legal scholarship lacks a framework for cultural practices, and consequently actual user experiences, that should inform information policy. Just as copyright law is configured to encourage the creation of culture, scholar Julie Cohen argues that the regimes governing information access and use need to take into account how the role of culture shapes social practices online. Read more...

It’s difficult to imagine what a woman might say after giving birth, but few of them immediately declare that they want to make a documentary film. American University professor Brigid Maher is currently working on “The Mama Sherpas,” a film that explores how doctors and midwives work together in a hospital system, known as collaborative care models. The Center for Social Media will be featuring a series of posts on the film, exploring how documentary films are born, raised, and shaped into successful agents of social impact.
Read more...