Blogs

66 posts

GMTaC blog posts are written by student and faculty lab affiliates and explore various topics related to research projects, events, and workshops.

AI For Good Summit –– Geneva, Switzerland

Published on July 22nd, 2019Written by Graduate Research Assistant Iago Bojczuk. My first year of graduate school at MIT came to an end with my participation at the 3rd edition of the “AI For Good Summit” in Europe. Organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)––the United Nations specialized agency for […]

Google and the World Brain: A Documentary Film Analysis

Published on May 3rd, 2019A blog post by Graduate Research Assistant Iago Bojczuk. Upon arriving in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT, it did not take much time to realize how much students are encouraged to think about communication and media practices across historical periods, cultural settings, and methods […]

Journalist Patrícia Campos Mello on WhatsApp and the 2018 Brazil Elections

Published on May 1st, 2019A blog post by Visiting Graduate Student Gabriel Pereira and Research Assistant Iago Bojczuk. Last year, in our blog post “Zap Zap, Who’s There? WhatsApp and the Spread of Fake News During the 2018 Elections in Brazil,” we discussed how WhatsApp messaging was influencing the Brazilian […]

Solar Solutions in Rural Tanzania

Published on April 2nd, 2019A blog post by Graduate Research Assistant Han Su. Imagine meeting someone from rural Tanzania — what could you have in common? One answer could be use of Facebook. But in a country where only 40% of people have access to grid electricity,1 how do users […]

The Kariakoo Market: Mobile Phone Repair Workers and the Shrinking Planet

Published on February 3rd, 2019A blog post by Graduate Research Assistant Iago Bojczuk. On the second day of the Social IT Solutions Workshop (SITS) at the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT), GMTaC lab members Han Su, Rachel Thompson, Prof. Lisa Parks, and I had the chance to visit […]

#Migrant: Social Media’s Influence on Migration

Published on January 28th, 2019A blog post by Graduate Research Assistant Matt Graydon. In 2015, over one million migrants and asylum seekers entered Europe by land and sea, a fourfold increase from the previous year.1 These individuals, seeking protection from violence in their homelands, better economic opportunities, or a combination […]

Outside of the HyperBlock, Inc. Bitcoin Facility in Bonner, Montana (Photo: Lisa Parks)

Sounds of a Bitcoin Data Center in Montana

Published on January 13th, 2019A blog post by GMTaC Director Lisa Parks. In late December 2018, I visited the site of a bitcoin data center in the small town of Bonner, Montana, twelve miles east of Missoula, where I grew up. Installed by a group called Project Spokane in April […]