11/22

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Day15-20

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Cambridge Common

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Day 49: Harvard

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The net from which you can’t escape

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“The home reproduces social stereotypes and socially constructed notions and practices about your body, your gender, your sexuality, familial hierarchies, the relationship between the public and the private, which altogether form a net from which you can’t escape”

Myrto Kiourti (interview with the author, August 2012)

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Day 48: New office

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First day in my new at the brand new HQ of the Engagement Game Lab, working on the paper on Obama’s Facebook campaign, checking out funding opportunities for the Cities global research and catching up with GPSG work.

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American Beauty

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“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in”

Alan Ball, American Beauty

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Day 47: The Kennedy Tapes

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I’ve read several great books in the last few months/years but I can’t remember the last time I was so gripped by a book that I lost sleep because I couldn’t put it down. It reads like it’s written by Aaron Sorkin – but it all happened and JFK secretly recorded everything on tape. We’re literally in the room at the moment when humanity approached its destruction. If I had a pure pol-sci / IR / management class this would be essential reading.

E. R. May and P. D. Zelikow (Eds), The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Concise edition, W. W. Norton & Co, 2002)

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Day 46: Reflective hiatus

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So I’m facing the first free couple of days after exactly four months of relentless work and I’m remembering once again how difficult it is to (re)learn to enjoy free time when you’re so used to running around. Furthermore, as I approach the 50-day mark I’m finding that being as observant and open as in those first few days is a tough, abeit welcome, challenge. Strategies I’ve developed to deal with this include taking purposively different (occasionally longer) routes to get where I want to get, and making an effort to talk to strangers even if I don’t need anything. Perhaps when I’m writing up my fieldwork paper there should be a parallel narrative of self-reflection running along with my observations re Boston – distinguishing between the two is not easy.

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Vintage Boston

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Day 45: Coffee & papers

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Perhaps the only good reason for abandoning the guaranteed comfort of the pleasantly familiar is the discovery of an even more pleasant unknown – such as Trident Booksellers and Cafe

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Day 44: North End

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Delicious dinner at Al Dente in the North End. The lobster ravioli and the shrimp/scallop pasta with the vodka cream sauce are a must.

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The semi-obscure second level of urban public space

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“Brothels and cemeteries constitute a semi-obscure second level of urban public space. They are spatially delineated, with their own rules- yet, they are vital to a city. It’s important to keep spaces like these at the heart of the city. Cemeteries were moved out of city centres in the 19th century because of the negative connotations (illness, death etc). No, this is life, this is memory, this is how you shape the culture: we all come from somewhere, and we will all end up somewhere, and some people will end up in that place”

Mara Bitrou, interview with the author (1 September 2012)

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Day 44: Bay Village and Back Bay

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Breakfast at Mike and Patty’s followed by coffee at the Wired Puppy

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Guest Lecture: Civic Engagement in the Era of Digital Storytelling

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On Wednesday, November 13th, I gave a guest lecture to the Interactive Communication graduate students at Emerson College.

The talk was entitled ‘Civic Engagement in the Era of Digital Storytelling‘.

Picking up from the first part of the workshop, which was about collaborative consumption and crowdsourcing, I presented the case of Cookisto – a peer-to-peer community that brings together amateur cooks and urban dwellers. Cookisto originated in Athens and it proved so successful that it was recently rolled out in London.

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The bulk of my talk was a bird’s eye view of my research on civic engagement during the last 11 years, starting with the factors that motivate young people to engage, as well as an evaluation of the contextual and technological aspects of online civic engagement based on the practice of NGOs and youth organisations. We have moved from a paradigm of participation based on duty, loyalty and familial rituals to a consumerist model built around issues, choice, efficacy and the self.

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This led me to examine specific ways that we engage with local and global affairs. One of the headline findings of my Unplugged research was that young people have largely withdrawn from urban public space; the ensuing bedroom culture and privatisation of space may be due to the availability of media in the bedroom, or to the fact that young people are structurally excluded from the urban landscape. Utilizing digital tools, reflective media literacy, art and cultural/historical walking trails are all great ways of re-engaging with the community and becoming stakeholders of public space.

The other aspect of that quest is looking at how we can motivate and enable people to engage with global current affairs, especially in the context of journalism education. This involves understanding the complexity and interdependence of institutions, actors and issues in the global community, as well as addressing the deficits of global governance and the non-existence of an institutional citizenship structure at the international/global level. Examining how new media are affecting diplomacy by enabling citizens and groups to actively participate in world politics is part of that research agenda.

I then presented a few examples of brilliant interactive and multimedia journalism, which I feel give us a glimpse into what journalism in the 21st century will look like.

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I finished the session by talking about two amazingly beautiful and successful examples of digital storytelling that exemplify the type of empathetic, localised, simple and visually literate engagement that promotes urban coexistence.

HONY

POB

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Day 43: celebratory lunch

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…at Four Burgers.

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Reading material…

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You can judge a university by the reading material available in its public toilets… #emerson

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The realisation of liberation

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“In order to enjoy something, I have to first liberate my body. Architectural design should liberate the user so that they can enjoy the experience of use […] Aesthetic beauty is ultimately about being moved by the realisation of liberation”

Myrto Kiourti (interview with the author, 30 August 2012)

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Day 42: Downtown

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Trying to get over the writing marathon of the last few days. Managed to get a seat at the Thinking Cup, which for a coffee house is more stressful than it sounds. Great coffee and the best (albeit highly priced) pastries/pralines in town – but the stress and implausibility of finding a free seat along with the lack of wifi make this not my top choice.

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Hoop Dreams

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Day 41: Roxbury

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Taking a stroll and some fresh air around Roxbury and the South End as the last few days have seen me quasi-institutionalised at home, writing up the chapter on how civic communities in Athens are utilising new media to engage with the city.

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The potentiality of the unexpected

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[A beautiful urban landscape] “should not provide us with a predetermined use of that space. It should allow for the potentiality of the unexpected”

Mara Bitrou (interview with the author, 1 September 2012).

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Day 40: Coffee & Papers

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Sunday bliss at Pavement Coffeehouse (Newbury St). Catching up with news, fieldwork journal etc and getting ready for the endgame of the chapter’s final few sections.

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Day 40: Mass Ave

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Struggle for Pleasure

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Day 38: Newport, RI

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Day 36: Boston Noir

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Recommended reading:

D. Lehane (Ed) (2009), Boston Noir, Akashik Books

D. Lehane (Ed) (2012), Boston Noir 2: the Classics, Akashik Books

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Day 35: South End

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On urban landscapes

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What is a beautiful urban landscape?

“Beauty is obviously subjective but what I personally consider to be a beautiful urban space is the space that highlights its urban [/civic] identity; it acknowledges and accepts speed, and allows the seamless coexistence of humans and cars, i.e. the efficient operation of complex systems”.

John Karahalios (interview with the author, August 2012).

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Day 35: Election Night

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Democracy in America

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