Eric Gordon is a Professor of Civic Media in the Visual and Media Arts Department, and the director of the Engagement Lab. He is also a research affiliate in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. His current research focuses on narrative persuasion and information integrity in social impact initiatives, and how they inform institutional trust and decision making. He has served as an expert advisor for local and national governments, as well as NGOs around the world, designing responsive tools and processes that help organizations transform to meet their stated values. He has created over a dozen digital games and apps for public sector use and advised organizations on how to build their own inclusive and meaningful processes. He is the author of two books about media and cities –The Urban Spectator (Dartmouth, 2010) and Net Locality (Blackwell, 2011, with Adriana de Souza e Silva). And he is the editor of Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (MIT Press, 2016, with Paul Mihailidis) and Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave, 2021, with Vicki Rapti). His book, Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (Oxford University Press, 2020, with Gabriel Mugar) examines practices in government, journalism and NGOs that reimagine civic innovation beyond efficiency. His new book, called Generative Listening: How We Can Use New Tech to Humanize Our Institutions, will be published in 2025.
About
- Department Engagement Labs
- Since 2004
Education
Ph.D., University of Southern California
Areas of Expertise
- Civic Media
Publications
Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency
2020Public trust in the institutions that mediate civic life-from governing bodies to newsrooms-is low. In facing this challenge, many organizations assume that ensuring greater efficiency will build trust. As a result, these organizations are quick to adopt new technologies to enhance what they do, whether it's a new app or dashboard. However, efficiency, or charting a path to a goal with the least amount of friction, is not itself always built on a foundation of trust.
Meaningful Inefficiencies is about the practices undertaken by civic designers that challenge the normative applications of "smart technologies" in order to build or repair trust with publics. Based on over sixty interviews with change makers in public serving organizations throughout the United States, as well as detailed case studies, this book provides a practical and deeply philosophical picture of civic life in transition. The designers in this book are not professional designers, but practitioners embedded within organizations who have adopted an approach to public engagement Eric Gordon and Gabriel Mugar call "meaningful inefficiencies," or the deliberate design of less efficient over more efficient means of achieving some ends. This book illustrates how civic designers are creating meaningful inefficiencies within public serving organizations. It also encourages a rethinking of how innovation within these organizations is understood, applied, and sought after. Different than market innovation, civic innovation is not just about invention and novelty; it is concerned with building communities around novelty, and cultivating deep and persistent trust.
At its core, Meaningful Inefficiencies underlines that good civic innovation will never just involve one single public good, but must instead negotiate a plurality of publics. In doing so, it creates the conditions for those publics to play, resulting in people truly caring for the world. Meaningful Inefficiencies thus presents an emergent and vitally needed approach to creating civic life at a moment when smart and efficient are the dominant forces in social and organizational change.
Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry
2020This book establishes play as a mode of humanistic inquiry with a profound effect on art, culture and society. Play is treated as a dynamic and relational modality where relationships of all kinds are forged and inquisitive interdisciplinary engagement is embraced. Play cultivates reflection, connection, and creativity, offering new epistemological directions for the humanities. With examples from a range of disciplines including poetry, history, science, religion and media, this book treats play as an object of inquiry, but also as a mode of inquiry. The chapters, each focusing on a specific cultural phenomenon, do not simply put culture on display, they put culture in play, providing a playful lens through which to see the world. The reader is encouraged to read the chapters in this book out of order, allowing constructive collision between ideas, moments in history, and theoretical perspectives. The act of reading this book, like the project of the humanities itself, should be emergent, generative, and playful.