The following are some of the current research efforts of CMS students and faculty.

Center for Future Civic Media

The Center for Future Civic Media (C4FCM) develops new tools and strategies for fostering civic engagement and strengthening social bonds in local communities. The Center takes technologies that have proven so powerful for virtual communities, and re-envisions and re-engineers them to enhance civic participation at a local level, providing new ways for local residents to organize and share information for the purpose of democratic deliberation, neighborhood collaboration, and political action.

Convergence Culture Consortium

The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) explores the ways the business landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping the flow of media. C3 connects researchers and thinkers from MIT's Comparative Media Studies program with companies looking to understand new strategies for doing business in a converging media environment. The consortium provides insights into new ways to relate to consumers, manage brands, and develop engaging experiences, strategies to cut through an increasingly cluttered media environment and benefit from emerging cultural and technological trends. We aim to expand the role of industry leaders by bridging the gap between academic and market research; Partners gain access to both broad-perspective thought leadership and focused analysis on events and campaigns.

Education Arcade

The Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. Its research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players. Its mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of videogames by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education.

Hyperstudio

The HyperStudio explores the potential of new media technologies for the enhancement of education and research in the humanities. Its work focuses on questions about the integration of technology into humanities curricula within the broader context of scholarly inquiry and educational practice. The HyperStudio conceptualizes, develops, and deploys innovative media applications in close collaboration with scholars, educators, students, and developers. The HyperStudio is sponsored by Foreign Languages & Literatures in close collaboration with the Comparative Media Studies Program and the Literature Faculty.

Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is a five-year research initiative that addresses important challenges faced by the global digital game research community and industry, with a core focus on identifying and solving research problems using a multi-disciplinary approach that can be applied by Singapore's digital game industry. The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab focuses on building collaborations between Singapore institutions of higher learning and various MIT departments to accomplish both research and development.