Using Virtual Reality to Foster Civic Engagement

Using virtual worlds to foster civic engagement in Boston will be the topic of the April 4

 meeting of the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) when it convenes for the final session this academic year. 

The meeting will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Rabb Room at Tisch College, and is open to all. A light lunch will be served. 

Eric Gordon, assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College, and Gene Koo, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, will brief the group on their ongoing project to involve residents of Boston in using Internet technology to help shape the design of their neighborhood.

“What usually happens is the city brings people together and asks them yes-or-no questions about a proposal. Our idea is to adopt internet technology to ask people to be part of an actual design project run by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, not by developing blueprints, but by participating in a dialogue in ways never before possible,” Gordon explained.

Koo and Gordon are adapting Second Life, an online 3-D virtual world, to spur community dialog. Local residents will gather in a lab and view a design proposal in Second Life. Together, they will move objects around to see what the streetscape could look like under different arrangements.

“This is much more involved than looking at a model,” said Gordon. “They’ll play with the space, because Second Life allows you to build things and move things around together.”

While many of the millions of Second Life “residents” who currently access that virtual world do so independently, Gordon said that the Hub2 project, as it is known, brings people together to jointly address a problem. This, he said, accomplishes two goals: it gets people to share and respond to each other’s ideas, and it surmounts the digital divide which would prevent those without internet access or technical savvy from participating.

Hub2—the first initiative of its kind—was launched last September with partnerships and support from members of Emerson College, Harvard University, the City of Boston and the BRA.

Gordon’s work is focused on the social dimension of new media, with a special interest in place-based digital communities, social networking, and virtual environments. He is working on two book projects: The Urban Spectator: New Media and the American City and The Place of Social Media: How Networks Think Globally and Act Locally. In addition to his work on public urban spaces, he is also interested in public academic spaces. He is working on a project funded by the National Endowment for Humanities that explores the use of the social web in academic lectures and events.

Koo helped found Legal Aid University, which provides training and professional development to poverty lawyers across the nation. Prior to his appointment at the Berkman Center, he worked at Mass. Law Reform Institute, where he coordinated a knowledge management website for the state, helped develop a portal to educate Massachusetts residents on their legal rights, and advised on technical and practical implementation of a statewide case management system. He is also involved with efforts across several law schools to use virtual environments for legal instruction.

Co-sponsored by Tufts’ Sociology and Political Science Departments and Tisch College, CERG has provided an interdisciplinary cross-school forum since 2003 for people at Tufts, as well as individuals from other colleges and Tufts host communities, to share ideas and present work in progress relating to civic engagement research.

For more information and to be added to the email notification list, contactsusan.ostrander@tufts.edu or kent.portney@tufts.edu.