Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Communications Forum records

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Program on Communications Policy was founded by political science faculty member Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1972, with seminars an important feature of the program. After Pool's death in 1984, the program was reformed as the Communications Forum continuing a relationship with business through the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, and also funded by foundation grants. The purpose was to bring together researchers, students, and outside experts to examine a range of communications related issues of interest to the MIT community, and better understand cutting edge developments in the field. Forum seminar sessions speakers are from the communication industry, media producers, government figures, and from academia. In 1998, the Communications Forum launched the Media in Transition project in collaboration with the new MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies (CMS). Funded by the Markle Foundation, this initiative involved a series of forums and conferences comparing earlier periods of decisive technological and social change with our contemporary experience of media transformation and convergence.

The strongest papers and reports generated by the project are now available in two volumes published by the MIT Press, Democracy and New Media and Rethinking Media Change, as part of a book series supervised by Forum Director David Thorburn. A website about the book series can be viewed at http://web.mit.edu/transition.

adapted from MIT Communications Forum publications