Center for Social Media

CSM showcases ways to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action. It focuses on social documentary films and on the public media environment that support civil society and democracy. In addition to hosting film festivals, conferences and working groups, it maintains a Web site that serves as a clearinghouse of resources for filmmakers, activists and scholars.

Investigative Reporting Workshop

The Investigative Reporting Workshop undertakes significant, original, national and international investigative reporting projects for multimedia publication or broadcast in collaboration with others, and will serve as a laboratory “incubator” to develop new economic models and techniques for conducting and delivering investigative journalism. There is no other university research center in the world examining new models for enabling and disseminating investigative reporting.

J-Lab: Institute for Interactive Journalism

J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways of participating in public life. J-Lab's programs include J-Learning and the Knight Citizen News Network, both of which are Web-based, comprehensive community journalism instruction programs; the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs Project, which provides seed funding and support for original news ideas proposed by women; and New Voices, which provides start-up funding and instruction for pioneering community news ventures in the United States. J-Lab also administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, one of the profession's most prestigious honors.

Center for Environmental Filmmaking

The Center, led by professor Chris Palmer, was founded on the belief that environmental and wildlife films are vitally important educational and political tools in the struggle to protect the environment. The Center’s mission is to train filmmakers to create films and new media that are effective at producing conservation and that are highly entertaining, ethically sound and educationally powerful.

Backpack Journalism Project

The Backpack Journalism Project at American University is mapping the landscape of emerging techniques and technologies for visual storytellers and educating the next generation of video journalists in the spirit and tradition of photojournalism and documentary filmmaking.

Community Voice Project

The Community Voice Project is a cross-campus initiative of faculty and students from SOC’s journalism division and the College of Arts and Sciences anthropology department. The Project enhances the academic missions of SOC and CAS while showcasing ways to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action. Launched with an initial two-year, $150,000 grant from the Surdna Foundation and the Project is working to grow its financial support. A digital library of the students’ work is being created to serve as a model for other university and non-profit collaborations throughout the country.

Current

AU's School of Communication is the steward of Takoma Park, Md.-based Current newspaper and its Web site Current.org. Current, published continuously since 1982 under the stewardship of WNET, is the sole, editorially independent news medium and forum for public television and radio—including PBS, NPR, and their member stations—an industry that, according to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, reported U.S. gross revenues of $2.6 billion in 2009.

Climate Shift Project

The Climate Shift Project is dedicated to the examination of these challenges, producing interdisciplinary research and independent media.  Climate Shift’s network of social scientists, scholars and professionals work with a diversity of organizations and agencies; train students, researchers and leaders; and convene forums and events that engage the Washington, D.C. community.

Foreign Correspondence Network

You want to work overseas. Photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, artist-in-residence and Emmy winner Bill Gentile--who has covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nicaragua--will connect you with SOC alumni working in more than 30 countries. Learn more about the Foreign Correspondence Network.