Center for Social Media

The Center for Social Media "showcases and analyzes strategies to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action. It focuses on social documentaries for civil society and democracy, and on the public media environment that supports them. The Center is part of the School of Communication at American University." 

In May 2005 the Center "received a $1 million dollar, two-year grant from the Ford Foundation, to launch the Public Media ThinkTank. The ThinkTank will conduct and publish research on new directions in public media, convene meetings of leaders throughout the field to think through these directions, host public events and screenings to showcase the best in public media, and encourage and create demonstration experiments in new public media expression. The ThinkTank’s activities will begin in September." pdf

Funders

 * Haas Family Trusts
 * John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
 * Rockefeller Foundation
 * Ford Foundation
 * Surdna Foundation
 * Annie E. Casey Foundation
 * John & Rachel King Foundation

Staff

 * Patricia Aufderheide - Executive Director
 * Kathryn Montgomery - Youth, Media & Democracy Project Director
 * Jessica Duda - Associate Director
 * Barbara Abrash - Research Director
 * Anders Lynch - Administrative Assistant
 * Martin Lucas - Media Fellow
 * Bree Bowman - Projects Manager
 * Brigid Maher - Video Producer
 * Maura Ugarte - Graduate Associate
 * Michael T. Miller - Graduate Associate
 * Jessica Clark - Media Fellow
 * Agnes Varnum - Special Projects Coordinator

Advisory Committee
Source
 * Barbara Abrash - Director of Public Policy Programs
 * Gillian Caldwell - Executive Director, Witness
 * Helen De Michiel - Co-Director, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
 * Sally Jo Fifer - President, Independent Television Service
 * Faye Ginsburg - Professor and Director, Center for Media, Culture and History, New York University
 * Barbara Kopple - Filmmaker
 * Cara Mertes - Executive Director, American Documentary | P.O.V.
 * Chon Noriega - Professor and Associate Director, Chicano Studies Research Center
 * Mimi Pickering - Film/Video Producer, Appalshop Films
 * Gordon Quinn - Filmmaker and Co-founder, Kartemquin Films
 * Ellen Schneider - Executive Director, Active Voice
 * George Stoney - Filmmaker and Goddard Professor of Cinema, New York University
 * Debra Zimmerman - Executive Director, Women Make Movies
 * Sandra Braman - Professor
 * Andrew Calabrese - School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado
 * Cole Campbell - Dean, Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada
 * Katy Chevigny - Executive Director, Arts Engine, Inc.
 * Linda Garcia - Director, Communication, Culture & Technology Program, Georgetown University
 * David Liroff - Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, WGBH Educational Foundation
 * Kevin Martin - Executive Vice President, KERA-TV Dallas, TX
 * Michael Schudson - Professor, Department of Communication, University of California - San Diego
 * Ernest J. Wilson III - Director, Center for International Development & Conflict Management, University of Maryland
 * Don Young (media) - Interim Executive Director, Center for Asian American Media

Contact

 * Web: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Neil Sieling