J. Nathan Matias

J. Nathan Matias, a PhD candidate at the MIT Center for Civic Media, researches the support and governance work of collective action online. As a designer, activist, and social scientist, Nathan uses quantitative and qualitative methods to answer questions that inform design interventions for social change. As a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Nathan is studying responses to online harassment, gender discrimination in collective action online, and the Reddit moderator blackout of 2015.

Holding Networks Accountable For Misuse of Power
Digital networks have offered powerful opportunities to restructure collective action beyond the hierarchies of traditional firms. Yet these networks can reproduce inequalities, sharing and amplifying distributed forms of injustice. We have few tools to identify collective misuses of power in these emerging organizational forms and fewer interventions to hold networks accountable or address the harms they propagate. In this talk, I share case studies and design interventions in citizen journalism, crowd funding, peer production, and online communities, to call for further attention on identifying misuses of power in collective action networks and addressing those misuses.