Meet Boston, Unscripted: realtalk@Boston Portal Goes Live
Hearing Boston’s people, in their own voices, is a first step toward rebuilding trust in public discourse.

What does Boston sound like when you stop to listen? Today, realtalk@Boston invites you to do just that—with the launch of a new public-facing portal where you can listen to hundreds of Bostonians, in their own voices, share stories about their neighborhoods, hopes, frustrations, and dreams for the future of their city.

FoRAGe
A New Tool for Bringing Increased Meaning to Community Conversations

FoRAGe is a search engine developed at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication that allows you to explore conversational data more deeply than would be possible through a keyword search. Queries, which can be written using everyday language, allow you to search for excerpts from conversation transcripts and analyses of the search results, complete with citations. The result is a synthesis of insights to encourage deeper exploration and discussion.

And the meaning of the name? The RAG in FoRAGe is a reference to Retrieval Augmented Generation sensemaking.

FRONTLINE Engages the Next Generation of Storytellers

FRONTLINE is no stranger to ambitious undertakings. For 40+ years, the program’s award-winning journalism has brought audiences across the globe in pursuit of the most pressing stories about the most urgent questions. Now, two years into the Youth Civic Voices Initiative, a collaborative fellowship with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) and the non-profit Cortico, FRONTLINE is bre

Reimagining Civil Discourse for the Next Generation
Summer fellowship program engages Boston youth in dialogue through journalistic storytelling, emerging technologies, and public conversations

This past summer, the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, its closely affiliated non profit, Cortico, and GBH’s FRONTLINE hosted 11 Boston students, ages 16 -21 as FRONTLINE fellows for a six-week paid fellowship at MIT’s Media Lab.

Checking in on realtalk@Boston, one year in
The realtalk@Boston cohort has hosted dozens of conversations across the city – what’s next?

The MIT Center for Constructive Communication, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has been training local community leaders to host facilitated conversations and learn about the needs of their diverse communities. We recently passed our sensemaking milestone: the conversations have been recorded, highlighted, and thematically categorized, with support from AI tools developed by

CCC hosts its second Tech-Enhanced Student Assembly
MIT undergraduates use a Citizens’ Assembly format to draw on their individual values and experiences to offer options for improved sustainability efforts on the MIT campus

MIT undergraduates use a Citizens’ Assembly format to draw on their individual values and experiences to offer options for improved sustainability efforts on the MIT campus

CCC launches a inaugural student advisory board
These seven undergraduate MIT students will be among those advising CCC on its research areas and programs.

MIT CCC is launching a student advisory board to help shape its ongoing research as well as student programming via realtalk@MIT. This group of undergraduates will contribute to the development of student-facing initiatives, provide input on outreach efforts, and help create environments where their peers feel comfortable engaging in deep and honest conversation.

CCC and DemNext take the first step towards developing a more transparent, inclusive democratic process
By audio recording and analyzing the entirety of the citizens’ assembly process, researchers make strides in understanding what drives effective deliberation

In a landmark achievement, MIT CCC and DemocracyNext have collaborated on the first-of-its-kind, tech-enhanced citizens’ assembly in Deschutes County, Oregon. 12,750 invitation letters were mailed to residents across Central Oregon. Of the respondents, 30 delegates were chosen via sortition (lottery), to be broadly representative of the area.

PBS’s FRONTLINE, Cortico, and CCC to engage youth in new Youth Civic Voices initiative
A new collaboration with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication empowers young people to shape the future of journalism and civic dialogue through AI and storytelling.

FRONTLINE, the acclaimed PBS documentary series produced at GBH in Boston, has announced the launch of a two-phase Youth Civic Voices Initiative designed to engage young people in civic dialogue through journalistic storytelling, emerging technologies, and public conversation.

UROP Opportunity: Participatory Budgeting & Community Engagement

Do you want to make an impact on student life at MIT? The Undergraduate Association (UA), in collaboration with realtalk@MIT, is running a participatory budgeting process this semester to give undergraduates a direct voice in how resources are allocated. 

Discovering the Future of WRAP via realtalk Conversations
The Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication Program collectively reflected on the shape and direction of their team

In Spring 2025, realtalk@MIT partnered with WRAP (the MIT Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication Program) to support groups of lecturers in reflecting on their work, their collective identity, and the future of their program.

Instructional Designer & Program Manager

The realtalk@MIT Instructional Designer and Program Manager will design, plan and execute the programmatic and educational activities of realtalk@MIT.

CCC Newsletter, Issue 11 (Spring/Summer 2025)

FRONTLINE collaboration, realtalk@MIT updates, & more