Hume joining MIT center which has $5M Knight grant to study "future civic media"

MIT announced last week that Ellen Hume (MGP2006) is moving from UMass Boston to head research for the Center for Future Civic Media. C4FCM, as it is known, was founded earlier this year with a $5-million grant from the Knight Foundation to "develop new techniques and technologies to promote and enhance civic engagement in local communities, providing people with new means to share, prioritize, organize and act on information . . . " The MIT release says the center uses the term "civic media" to refer to any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents. Here's the MIT news release: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/future-media-1206.html
. . . and background on Hume's New England Ethic Newswire project at UMass, which will continue.