A Social Justice Journalism Lab at RU Provides a Real Spark

NJ Spark is a social justice journalism lab at Rutgers University, bringing students together with media makers and journalists to create media for and with underserved communities. Stories are told of the working class, immigrants, and the impoverished as a light is shined on the organizations that support those groups along with the inequality and injustice plaguing our society. Its guiding principle is that when people come together to re-imagine their communities, it can spark real change. The MIC Center explores the intersections between media, democracy, technology, policy, and social justice, and produces engaged research and  analysis while collaborating with community leaders to help support activist initiatives and policy interventions. The MIC Center’s objective is to develop a local-to-national strategy that focuses on communication issues important  to local communities and social movements in the region, while also addressing how these local issues intersect with national and international policy challenges. The  Center’s core principles are to research, educate, connect, and engage. MIC accomplishes this by assessing social movement strategies and democratic  deployments of technology; contributing to policy interventions that encourage structural reform; committing to long-term field building in political economy, media, policy and technology studies and other cognate areas;  assisting social justice campaigns, and making material interventions around media and democracy. Bringing together scholars, journalists, policy-makers, activists, philanthropists, and diverse constituencies, MIC strives to create more democratic media systems that serve community needs.

For more information: The Media, Inequality and Change Center (MIC)