Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University

09/04/2026

Thrilled to share that we're a recipient of Mass Cultural Council's 2026 Creative Experiences Grant! ⁠
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This grant will support our fall festival, "Media in Motion II: Shaping AI for Critical Creative Futures," which will explore how artificial intelligence shapes and is shaped by creativity, knowledge production, and civic life. ⁠
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Scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 29, "Media in Motion II" will bring together scholars, artists, and practitioners for a full day of presentations, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, a film screening, and an exhibition of interactive media artwork. Participants will leave with a richer understanding of how we can be active agents in shaping AI — and how, in turn, it will shape our critical and creative futures.⁠
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Details and registration for the event are coming soon. Check out the event page at the link in bio for updates!

08/27/2026

How has the mobile phone impacted our lives?

The Oral Histories of Mobile Communication project documents the foundational years of the field through video interviews with key scholars who shaped its development.

Launched to capture the insights of pioneering researchers from the 1990s and early 2000s, this project preserves the intellectual history of mobile communication, offering firsthand accounts of its evolution, key debates, and transformative moments.

In this launch event, participants will be able to watch a short film with key moments of the project’s interviews, and participate in a lively round table discussion with foundational scholars in the field.
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Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oral-histories-of-mobile-communication-screening-tickets-1997171604030?aff=oddtdtcreator
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🗓️ Sept. 22
⏱️ 3:30pm ⁠ET⁠
📍Snell Library Room 350A

08/25/2026

We hope you've had a restful and fun summer! Next month, we're excited to kick off our fall webinar series with a timely discussion on AI governance.

In "Policy, Power, and Accountability in the Age of AI," we'll bring together experts to talk this issue from a political and cultural standpoint: who sets the rules, whose values are encoded in them, and what accountability is possible when systems operate across borders and communities.

Drawing on applied ethics, media and communication studies, and labor-centered approaches to AI policy, the conversation traces how regulation is shaped from above, through legislation, industry self-governance, and international bodies, and contested from below, through worker organizing, civil society advocacy, and grassroots demands for digital sovereignty.

Register here: https://northeastern.zoom.us/meeting/register/cBv5Y8BpQ3SCDhV_39aVZA #/registration

06/19/2026

Congratulations to our postdoc Yifan Xu Miller, whose Boston Globe Media op-ed just went live yesterday!

Despite the viral videos of humanoid robots supposedly acting autonomously, Yifan points out that the technology is not nearly as advanced as it appears on social media.

"Behind every polished demo video is an army of engineers fixing parts, guiding robots through tasks, and sometimes just doing the tasks themselves," Yifan writes. "In most cases, humans are remotely controlling the robots using virtual reality headsets, but you’d never know it from promotional footage that’s carefully edited to crop out those people."

"The robots aren’t autonomous. They’re a performance of autonomy."

Read the full piece here:

Autonomous machines aren't as independent as we think.

04/21/2026

One month from today! Join Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg on Zoom for "Audience, AI & Events: A free skill-building webinar for local news publishers."

This all-day event includes several interactive workshops facilitated by leaders in their fields, including:

• Audience development and engagement with Emily Turner, deputy editor of community at Boston.com.
• AI skills for local news organizations with Dr. John Wihbey, associate professor of journalism and media innovation at Northeastern
• Keynote from Dan Lothian, editor-in-chief and general manager of local news at GBH. Lothian will be in conversation with Lee H., executive editor of GBH News.
• Event planning for building community with Iris Adler, veteran broadcast news executive and a board member at Brookline.News
• Wrapping things up with Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy, co-leaders of What Works and co-authors of “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate.”

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/audience-ai-and-events-tickets-1987362369345
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This event is organized by What Works, supported by the Northeastern University School of Journalism and co-sponsored by the Center for Transformative Media at CAMD.

04/15/2026

Today at 2pm ET! Join us for a discussion on how synthetic content creators are redefining authenticity, labor, and identity online.

Register here: https://northeastern.zoom.us/meeting/register/WxAVyRMiROWiqmXB0uPOVQ #/registration

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Panelists: Christine Tran, John Wihbey, Seo Eun “Sunny” Yang

Moderator: Nora Suren

Description: Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the creator economy and influencer culture at lightning speed. From hyper-real virtual influencers to AI-generated video content that’s populating TikTok and Instagram, AI influencers erase the distinction between human imagination, machine automation, and promotion.

This webinar explores how synthetic content creators are redefining authenticity, labor, and identity online. With critical and creative lenses, we’ll explore how these trends unveil deeper questions regarding gender, race, and power in the generative media era—who gets represented, who gets erased, and how algorithmic aesthetics are globalizing new forms of digital labor and desire.

04/08/2026

Generative AI is disrupting education, and it’s time we contend with that. In our new video series, 11 professors across CAMD share how they’re engaging with AI in teaching, research, and creative practice — from active integration to principled resistance.

Each video gives a brief snippet of a professor’s philosophy on generative AI use and how they use it in the classroom (or don’t use it at all).

This series was originally envisioned by Jason Donati and Adriana de Souza e Silva as part of their AI Faculty Fellowship. We’d also like to give a special shout-out to Jahangir Babar, our video editor, who put these all together so beautifully!

Watch the full series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VErucE0Ius&list=PLQtLraqLFNbvYq68iy3ictZULobF0x1A8

04/02/2026

For this month's scholar spotlight, CTM communications assistant Vivica Dsouza interviewed Caleb Okereke.

Caleb is a Ph.D. student at CAMD. Before entering academia, Okereke worked as a journalist and founded Minority Africa, a publication focused on underreported communities across the continent. His work spans reporting, editing and research, with a consistent focus on how media systems shape the visibility, and invisibility, of marginalized groups.

Read the full interview here: https://camd.northeastern.edu/news/ctm-scholar-spotlight-caleb-okereke/

04/01/2026

This Monday at 1pm in 350A Snell! Join us for a book talk with Art + Design Prof. Sylke Meyer.

Her recent book, "Soviet Narratology and Spatial Story Design," provides a fascinating take on what Russian formalism can teach us about spatial storytelling.

Since the tradition emphasizes structure over content, what a narrative is “about” matters less than its form, structure and the location in which it takes place.

That shift also downplays the author as the primary source of meaning and moves toward space as a carrier of narrative meaning.⁠
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Spatial story design is about shaping the probabilities of how a user behaves inside that space. You don’t control everything, but you can guide experience through design.⁠
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Register at the 🔗 in bio! ⁠
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🗓️ Monday, Apr. 6 ⁠
⏱️ 1-3pm ⁠
📍350A Snell Library