I was delighted to serve as moderator of last night’s panel on “Free Speech for Whom?” with danah boyd (@zephoria), Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen), and Zeynep Tufekci (@techsoc) (more about which in another post).  At the end of the panel, I asked the panelists what one thing they might change if they were going to address the issue of hate speech and other forms of offensive trolling and abusive behavior online. The closing comments came from danah boyd who urged the audience of mostly academics, activists, and web-theorizers to “be more public with your work.”  As Dorothy (@deedottiedot) tweeted:

I mention this here because danah’s call to action for the audience last night speaks directly to the core idea behind JustPublics@365.  As people who are committed to social justice, we see a lot that’s wrong with the world from hate speech, to growing economic inequality, to criminalization of large segments of the population.  We also know that there is a good deal of academic research that could speak to those persistent inequalities and entrenched inequalities that open up new ways of thinking about old problems.  JustPublics@365 is all about connecting academic research to social justice efforts already happening, and using digital media to do just that.  “Be public with your work,” well said, danah boyd.