Programs
USC AnnLab’s Civic Media Fellowship hosts artists, organizers, makers, storytellers, and others using media and technology with participatory practices that advance social progress in ways that defy easy categorization. They invest in learning with and from each other, exploring new modes of expression, and otherwise pushing their practice into unexpected places.
The program recognizes that the tremendous innovation, commitment and progress among civic media practitioners thrives in spite of minimal support and a rocky career path. Whether broadly visible or deeply engaged with a specific community, they live on the cutting edge, pushing boundaries with novel and meaningful work, challenging organizations and funders to catch up. We commit to supporting them to realize their potential now and over time, in community with others, while building out the field.
WIth sustained funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, we welciomed the pilot cohort in January 2019, followed by subsequent editions in fall of 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2025. Cohorts average a dozen fellows, last the academic year, enjoy a modest stipend, and participate in both weekly and ad hoc activities. Alumni remain in the community as Senior Fellows, participating as mentors, collaborators and leaders.
We Are Civic Media is a collective manifesto for field builders, stakeholders, educators, creative professionals, and community leaders who want to understand BOTH the deeply personal human as well as the broader conceptual dimensions of civic media.
Created through a process that aligns with a commitment to participatory meaning-making, this book is by the people and about the people. It takes a human-centered approach to civic media; one that foregrounds lived experiences, struggles, concerns, solidarity, and aspirations of those who create and engage with civic media, whether they realize it or not. Each section of this book offers one of many possible paths through the contributors’ lived experiences as civic media practitioners as they engage in their own journeys, projects, challenges, and joys.
The stories shared deserve and need to be read as rich and complex as their own pieces as well as a collection alongside one another. These stories cannot be contained or put into limiting categories, so we invite the reader to enter the world of our civic media and find their own paths and connections.
The Civic Media Scholar and Researcher Network is a dynamic, community-driven space for civic media scholar-practitioners to connect, interact, learn and collaborate around research. The approach is lightweight and emergent in order to reflect participants’ interests and needs in a young and rapidly-evolving field. It is inspired by wide and deep interest in civic media practice, appreciation for genuine and appreciative interaction between scholarship and practice — both within and among individuals, and recognition that this work happens in diverse venues with wide-ranging methods and protagonists. The community encompasses everyone from independent scholars to tenured faculty, artists to entrepreneurs. Participation is not based on job title or organizational home, but on ideas, attitude and commitment.
Although the Network (which launched in early 2026) is in the early stages of identifying shared priorities, developing supportive structures and processes, and building momentum, initial meetings and interactions have been tremendously compelling, underscoring substantial need for this community and an even greater capacity to advance both individually and collectively. Please fill out this form if you are interested in learning more.
Defining “media” as the intersections of technical knowledge, humanistic investments, social relations, economic models, political stakes, and aesthetic expression that people use to understand and shape their lives, MASTS is an interdisciplinary community of knowledge and action that aims to rigorously and playfully build better media infrastructures, strengthen public life, and advance social justice.
Through a mix of weekly meetings, project salons, skills sharing, guest lectures, reading groups, and social events, we convene people, knowledge, and action across USC and beyond to build short-term interventions and long-term initiatives.
Our investigations can take the form of academic studies, journalistic storytelling, futures narratives, policy recommendations, public campaigns, guerilla art, system prototypes, public events, learning spaces – and any other modes of engagement that create insight and impact.
The Arts & Climate Collective (ACC) is a collaboration among students, staff and faculty centering arts, culture, and storytelling as forces for realizing a holistic and ambitious sustainability and environmental justice agenda. Fueled by USC Arts In Action (a program of Visions and Voices), the USC Office of Sustainability, USC Fisher Museum and USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, the ACC supports student work and engagement with funding, guidance, communications and above all, community. This combination helps drive the social movement around sustainability, while developing essential skills and attitudes that prepare students for long-term success and fostering connection among people on campus and off. Recognizing the powerful interplay of art and culture work with research and action around sustainability, ACC participants include about 100 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students from almost all of USC’s schools, and it has hosted three large public and many smaller events annually since 2021.
How Do You Like It So Far? is a podcast that uses pop culture to take soundings of a society in transition, exploring intersections with civic imagination and engagement, and social and political change. Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay have been the primary guides on this adventure since 2018, fueled and inspired by a host of talented students and remarkable guests. We tap people from our networks of activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, artists, technologists, fans, educators, journalists, and media industry insiders, all of whom have something interesting to say about the relationship between popular culture and social change. With over 100 episodes and counting, the podcast seeks to dig deeper, tapping into popular culture to ask questions about who we are and where we are going that include politics, law, technology, economy, and society, and often cut across all of them.
Teaching and learning run through everything we do, from informal interactions, to community programming and research in efforts such as the Arts & Climate Collective, Civic Media Fellowship, MASTS and the Presidential Sustainability Solutions Fellowship, and also manifest in the classroom environment. Course-based opportunities are dynamic, varying with time, need, opportunity and more. Recent courses include Civic Media and Participatory Politics and Climate Stories, with new offerings in process.
The Presidential Sustainability Solutions Fellowship helps prepare the next generation of sustainability leaders by incubating and guiding their ambitious interdisciplinary research efforts, and catalyzing a diverse and engaged community of scholars at USC. It serves specific ends for research and career development while supporting a budding social movement around interdisciplinary sustainability solutions scholarship at USC. This postdoctoral program reflects our institutional ambition, commitment and solutions-oriented approach to addressing sustainability, environmental justice, climate change and other inter-related fields. Postdocs pursue their own scholarship, while reserving time for interdisciplinary exchange, collaboration and skill development with their cohort and the broader USC sustainability community. This unique combination supports not only visionary work and integrated career development, but meaningful engagement for scholars across USC, thus enabling the fellows to scale their impact for a true multiplier effect. In welcoming these emerging scholars to USC, we not only celebrate innovative ideas, but create an unparalleled opportunity to foster interaction and collaboration across disciplines, foci and career stages.
archived projects
Edison
Truthiness
Count the Nation
Engaging Cities
Re-Envisioning AnnX