Announcing the 2022-23 RSM Assembly Fellows
The Berkman Klein Center’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media (RSM) is delighted to announce the inaugural cohort of RSM Assembly Fellows – thirteen interdisciplinary professionals who will build new interfaces, implement novel protocols, and create additional artifacts that reimagine digital social space in service of democracy and the public interest. During the 2022-23 academic year, they will pursue their respective projects while collaborating with the larger BKC community and other scholars who are trying to revamp the social media landscape.
“While few will defend the status quo, there’s little agreement on what would be better or whom to trust to intervene,” said Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. “This program is designed to make concrete progress on some of the profound questions, with people who are directly involved in the building of, or experiencing the effects of, social media.”
Inspired by BKC’s successful Assembly Program, the RSM Assembly Fellowship brings together designers and creators from a variety of backgrounds. The inaugural RSM Fellows have experience with entrepreneurship, data science, community organizing, game design, art, law, media, and more, and their projects address an array of challenges from, and for, social media.
Learn more about the 2022-2023 RSM Assembly Fellows.
In addition to their project work, the Fellows will engage with RSM’s Visiting Scholars. As explained by James Mickens, co-director of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media, “the RSM Scholars are a collection of professors whose academic insights will hopefully complement the practitioner-focused work of the RSM Fellows. We’re excited to see what emerges from the interplay between the two groups!”
From October 2022 to April 2023, the Fellows will convene both remotely and in-person, with in-person meetings held at the Berkman Klein Center’s new home in the Reginald F. Lewis Law Center at Harvard Law School. The Fellowship is part of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media’s larger collection of programming, research, and educational offerings. The Institute plans to run the Fellows program annually throughout its three-year duration, with the goal of strengthening the interdisciplinary community that is tackling the most challenging problems of social media.
The Institute for Rebooting Social Media and its programs are supported by generous contributions from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Reid Hoffman, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Archewell Foundation.