Book release for "Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets"

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A presentation by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Assistant Professor of Civic Media in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing Department at MIT, on his new book "Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets!". The book — about media, community organizing, and immigrant rights — reveals that the revolution will be tweeted, but tweets alone will not the revolution make. The talk was followed by book signing and reception. In the book, Costanza-Chock traces a broader social movement media ecology, and finds that social media enhances, rather than replaces, face-to-face organizing. He argues that social movements engage in transmedia organizing: despite the current spotlight on digital media, social movement media work is often cross-platform, participatory, and linked to action. Immigrant rights organizers leverage social media creatively, alongside a range of tools from posters and street theater to Spanish-language radio, print, and television. In his talk, Costanza-Chock draws on extensive interviews, workshops, and media organizing projects to describe the evolution of transmedia organizing in the immigrant rights movement between 2006 and 2012. Key threads include the mass protests against the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill; coverage of police brutality against peaceful protesters; and the implications of professionalized transmedia organizing for community accountability. The book is published by the MIT Press, with a full-text preprint available online under a Creative Commons license: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/out-shadows-streets This event is presented in collaboration with the MIT Center for Civic Media.