USC Annenberg and the Social Science Research Council's Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere program co-hosted a two-day gathering June 2-3 of more than 50 grantees, program partners, scholars and advocates at the Annenberg School. The workshop attendees discussed strategies to improve and increase research-advocacy collaborations on media and communications issues.
The goals of the workshop were to:
- Share experiences for producing effective collaborations and research projects
- Learn about current projects, build networks and ideas for increasing their impact
- Generate strategies for overcoming obstacles that limit collaborative research
- Explore how collaborative research and advocacy can connect in an international context
- Identify the knowledge and research needs for the changing future of the media environment
"All of us scholars are trying to figure out how to take these things we are learning and put them together in one place so they’re sustainable," USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III said. "The challenge is to substantiate that within an organization so it persists through time, so the best practice you discovered lives on."
The workshop's framework gave participants the opportunity to talk to each other instead of merely presenting their research, said Joe Karaganis, program director of the Social Science Research Council's Media, Technology and Culture division.
"In this context, we can talk about things such as how to intervene effectively and how to navigate the complex organizational issues we deal with on a daily basis," Karaganis said.
