When courthouses and in-person government meetings shut down because of COVID-19, officials satisfied Kansas’ open meeting mandate by using pandemic relief aid to equip buildings with the technology needed to live stream proceedings and allow constituents to comment remotely. Crowds watching on platforms like Facebook Live were substantially higher than in-person attendance had ever been. Several cities linked agendas online and found creative ways to include public comments in meetings. Advocates are looking to maintain the public’s increased civic engagement as courts and government offices are reopening.

Locally owned restaurant delivery platforms charge lower commissions than national giants like GrubHub, allow customers to order food on smart-phone apps, and have found ways to be profitable while also keeping money in local economies. While platforms differ by locale, cooperative models are increasingly popular. For example, Delivery Co-op in Lexington, KY provides customers with unlimited deliveries for a monthly fee, charges participating restaurants a flat monthly fee, and pays drivers a base salary plus tips, with benefits kicking after three months of full-time work and profit-sharing after one year.

Urban Coders Guild provides STEM education opportunities to underrepresented communities and is working with local students to build websites for the businesses destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre. While none of the businesses operate today, the program builds awareness of the massacre while also teaching students coding skills to build websites. The course is also considered a “prep” course for the future because it teaches students how to interact with others as well as listen to and accept feedback from others. The group partnered with Tulsa Community College students to create the content and logos.

In 1965 a traveling salesman published a series of travel guides with gay or gay-friendly businesses across the U.S. that became survival guides for the LGBTQ community. “Mapping the Gay Guides” has digitized those collections, allowing users to explore the original descriptions and added historical content written by graduate students. Reasons for why locations appear and disappear from year-to-year are provided, which sometimes intersect with LGBTQ hate crimes. A $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow them to continue to preserve and make the forgotten history accessible.

To make internet connectivity accessible and affordable across Africa, Dr. Harold Omondi developed “internet from the moon,” a technology that uses satellite dishes to communicate with transponders placed in the moon several years ago by NASA. The transponders can send and receive information and, since the moon keeps the same side of its surface pointed towards earth, the connection cannot be lost. Still in the piloting phase, the system currently offers free internet at Jomo Kenyatta University, where over 1,200 people login every day, and has another station in South Sudan serving 300-500 people daily.

The Egyptian Facebook group Qawem (Arabic for resist) helps victims of sextortion by turning threats around to target the attacker. Sextortion, in which threatened disclosure of a person's nude or other embarrassing photos are used as a tool of extortion, is illegal in Egypt. But women – the typical victims – are often reluctant to report incidents to the police, out of shame or fear. When victims report sextortion attempts to Qawem, volunteers counsel the victims while other volunteers track down the extortionists and threaten to expose them to their family or friends. About 200 cases per week get resolved.

As traditional local media outlets shrink or disappear, non-profit digital news outlets are popping up to fill the void. The New Bedford Light is one example, formed by journalism veterans and following the playbook of the Institute for Nonprofit News, the outlet provides in-depth investigative journalism. From holding government officials accountable to profiling the local human impact of COVID, the content provides deep dives into issues that matter to the local community. Content is free to readers and instead of advertising, it relies on donations, grants, and sponsorships from local businesses.

Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.

Digital library services in Kansas City were ramped up to serve patrons even as doors closed to visitors during the pandemic. Wi-Fi Hotspots were made available for downloading books, virtual story times for children were offered, and in addition to digital programs, services like dial-a-story were also offered over the phone for families without adequate internet service.

Orange County congressional members increased the number of town halls they hold since the coronavirus pandemic forced them to from in-person to virtual events. Going virtual increased the frequency of citizen’s access to hear from their representatives and also allowed many more people to tune in, especially those unable to attend town halls due to work or physical ability. A virtual event held by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) was attended by 100,000 people, whereas in-person events pre-pandemic drew about 400 people. Live-streamed virtual events are faster to arrange and less expensive to host.

Maryland and Ohio recently held elections almost entirely by mail and their different approaches provide insight into the impact on low-income voters, particularly those without permanent addresses. All registered voters in Maryland were sent mail-from-home ballots whereas Ohio voters had to request a ballot. Despite some reports of issues, turnout in Maryland increased 10 percentage points overall and 6 points in Baltimore City, indicating no widespread disenfranchisement in poorer counties. In Ohio, the extra step created a barrier for many voters and turnout decreased from 43.6% in 2016 to just 22.6%.

CekFakta is a collaborative network that fights misinformation with around 6,000 fact-checkers from major Indonesian media organizations, citizens, and academics. The group holds training sessions to help journalists identify doctored images and misinformation, with the idea that participants will pass the skills on to their colleagues. CekFakta impacted 2019 presidential debates with large-scale, real-time, collaborative fact-checking that enabled a quick release of fact-checked information. The collaborative process is key to helping people find high-quality information amid so much online content.

Voting by mail will increase dramatically due to Covid-19 and drop boxes are one way to collect these ballots. Although fears of fraud have been unfounded, the GOP initiated lawsuits to block or limit drop boxes if they are not monitored so some states and districts place the boxes in government buildings and other places, such as libraries, that are staffed. While this slightly limits the hours that voters can drop off their ballots, it uses existing resources to provide supervision and increases voter confidence that their ballots will be received, especially among ongoing issues with the postal service.

To reduce the spread of disinformation, Twitter labeled about 300,000 tweets with warnings that they contained "disputed and potentially misleading" information about the election between October 27 and November 11. The tweets were from removed from recommendation algorithms, extra steps were needed to reply to or share a tweet, and almost 500 had an additional warning that users had to click past to read. Twitter says it saw a 29% reduction in quoting the tweets that had the warnings and, while several election related changes will end, users will still have to quote tweets rather than simply retweeting.

In the 1980s, a virtual messaging network, then known as bulletin board systems (BBSs), acted as a support group for many who were in search of peer support and reliable information as the AIDS epidemic spread. Although the site was a grassroots effort with little to no financial stability, it grew to 500 daily users and 100 messages posted per day.

When COVID-19 hit the U.S., Hotel Vouchers 4 All was created as an emergency response to finding housing for San Diego residents experiencing homelessness. Funded by donations, the initiative has partnered with a local motel to negotiate lower rates for individuals to stay and socially distance during the pandemic. It also helps provide meals, clothes, PPE, and access to health services, but with limited funding and a lack of support from the city, it’s sustainability hangs in question.

LGBTQ asylum seekers face a unique set of problems coming to the United States, often from places where gender expression and sexuality are strictly regulated. Four organizations across the US, Mexico, and Canada are filling this unique niche. For example, AsylumConnect created an app of resources on how to apply for asylum and a catalogue of LGBTQ-friendly services and organizations in the US for them to learn about. All four aim to validate LGBTQ asylum seekers and keep them safe.

Since its April 2018 founding in Malaysia, the Be My Protector app has enabled interventions in 120 cases of suspected human trafficking, sparked by anonymous reports that its app enables. In about a third of those cases, which mostly involved migrant workers in South and Southeast Asia, the victims were able to return to their homes, while others were offered counseling. But, like the more than 90 such apps available around the world, Be My Protector has struggled to make a big impact. Many such apps capitalize on a trendy subject without a clear focus on improving conditions and helping victims.

The largest cinema chain in South Korea is renting screen time and auditorium space to video gamers as a way to supplement business income during the coronavirus pandemic. Though it doesn't generate a comparable amount of income as movies do, it has still attracted over 100 consumers thus far and other movie vendors have adopted the idea.

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers across Belarus worked together to collect and deliver personal protective equipment to frontline workers, despite the Belarusian government denying the spread of the coronavirus. Using social media to organize, the volunteers "served as a kind of SWAT team able to bypass the bureaucracy to obtain the necessary equipment."

A community-led program, Nashua Community Conversations on Race and Justice, has held numerous forums on policing and racial justice for more than five years. Racial justice activists say the effort, featuring breakout groups where residents or students talk to police officers and both sides share their perspectives, have significantly improved police-community relations. But the city's overwhelmingly white police force continues to arrest people of color at disproportionately high rates, showing that "perceptions have changed more than arrest statistics."

Hate crime laws apply to a narrow range of conduct, and often fail as a response to bias incidents that constitute hate speech but are not in themselves a crime. When high school students working on a history class project produced a video with a song treating the KKK and racist murders as a joke, the school and community responded not with prosecutions but with community dialogues to air differences of opinion about the incident. Students of color then formed a group, Project D.R.E.A.M., that expanded the conversations to the entire school, educating a mainly white community about the impact of racism.

Louisa County schools in Virginia are delivering internet to students living in rural areas through solar-powered hot spots, built by the school's own students. The hotspot is powered by solar panels and receives internet connectivity through cellular or satellite means. Over 22 units have been placed in accessible places like church parking lots and the school district is sharing its blueprints and instructions with other schools across the state.

As New Hampshire schools debate the presence of police officers stationed in schools, one model they and other states can consider is found at Minnesota Intermediate School District 287. That district lowered in-school arrests dramatically by replacing school resource officers (SROs) with student safety coaches, trained in de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention. While some staff cite safety fears now, school officials say healthier relationships form between staff and students when help, not law enforcement, is the response to problems.

Digital sleuths preserved a trove of evidence from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by acting quickly to "scrape" and archive videos, images, and other data from social media. Investigative journalists from Bellingcat, the Toronto-based Citizen Lab, and Czech data archive Intelligence X were among those who responded before rioters, worried about criminal charges, began deleting posts. Crowdsourcing calls for assistance also produced a robust response from people anxious to aid law enforcement or debunk post-riot disinformation.

The Human Library hosts one-on-one conversations between people who have faced prejudice (they're the "books" that get borrowed) and "readers" who yearn to ask awkward questions that they've never been comfortable asking. "Books" tell about being transgender, an immigrant, polyamorous, a wheelchair user, a former gang member, and more. The events spread to dozens of countries, funded by corporations that hire The Human Library to help their employees learn about diversity in its many forms. Both the "readers" and the "books" can experience deep connections in only a half-hour encounter.

Vaccine Talk is a Facebook group for evidence-based discussion to help both pro- and anti-vaccine people wade through all of the conflicting, and oftentimes wrong, information about the COVID-19 vaccine. The group has a tough reputation because of its strict moderation system and rules of discourse. Each of the group’s 70,000 members was approved by an administrator to join and committed to a code of conduct. Users must be ready to provide citations within 24 hours of posting and the moderators don’t hesitate to kick out members who lack civility, misrepresent themselves, or make unsubstantiated claims.

One solution to the increasing monopolization of news media outlets by a few wealthy individuals is crowd funding. In France, Julia Cagé created Un bout du Monde to raise money to intervene in the shareholding of Le Monde Group. Each person, for a donation of €5, receives one vote in the general assembly of participating press titles. Reaching the goal of providing diverse management of the media has been slow, and results are expected once more money is raised. So far, 2,170 people have donated to raise more than €155,821, a substantial amount but a long way from the millions needed to make a difference.

Digital news startups and platforms are contributing to the growth of independent media in Canada. The outlets are delivering news that can target specific groups and serve specific communities, as opposed to traditional media which seeks to gain the largest possible audience. An increase in subscriptions and a willingness from consumers to pay for quality content has put community news outlets in a position to succeed. Independent news entrepreneurs, Indiegraf, is helping journalists maximize profits by providing technology and business tools.

Although many of the schools surrounding Silicon Valley's tech companies are populated by Latino children, less than five percent of the area's tech professionals are Latino. A number of organizations are working to introduce and expose students to the tech giants just miles from where they learn. For instance, Pathways, Exposure, Academic Connection, Knowledge (PEAK) takes students on tours of Google, Facebook, and the offices of other similar companies and coordinates internships for local students over breaks.

“In 2015, nearly 21 million U.S. residents relied on water systems that violate the standards set by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.” Meena Sankaran is helping to reverse the trend. Her startup, KETOS, uses analytics and sensors that provide real-time data that can be sent through a mobile app. Instead of having to wait for people to monitor and process the data, or for people to get sick, data can be delivered instantaneously. “So far, the company has compiled 13 million data points from municipalities across all 50 states, spanning the last 18 years.”

Researchers from Stanford University have developed a software that uses machine-learning algorithms to identify and flag urgent faxes about COVID-19 cases. While the project doesn't have complete accuracy, it has helped overwhelmed and overburdened health care workers at the health department in Contra Costa County, California work more efficiently.

CS Remastered is a nonprofit that provides free individualized coding classes to students. The kind of one-on-one tutoring they might not get at school. The nonprofit was started by 17-year-old, Samvit Agarwal, who got the idea after he started tutoring kids from his neighborhood. “The entire idea is to make it as flexible or as adaptable to each student as possible,” Samvit says. Since its launch, the nonprofit has expanded to include 250 volunteers who service 300 students. “CS Remastered has opened four chapters in the U.S., one in India, and one in China.”

Glenn Cantave is bridging two worlds- AR technology and school curriculum, in order to educate students about Black and Brown people's history. With a team of coders he created an app called “Movers and Shakers.” The app has a catalog of “heroes you never learn about in school.” Student users navigate the app to learn about the heroes; women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community. The app is being tested in one school district. “This sounds horrible, but we need to see what white people actually did to Black people because textbooks only tell you this much — and it’s not enough."

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites defended against election-related disinformation campaigns by quickly identifying and removing fake accounts and putting labels and warnings on posts that made false claims of voter fraud and premature claims of victory. Instead of frictionless usability, they slowed or shut down core parts of their products such as limiting political ads, tweaking recommendation algorithms, and/or preventing sharing and comments on questionable posts. Threats will continue in the weeks ahead, but the companies have prevented widespread disinformation campaigns so far.

In order to mitigate the impact of fake news crafted and spread for political purposes, social media sites and independent organizations are developing media literacy tools. These range from changes to social media algorithm, flagging posts with disputed content, and having staff investigate a flagged article’s claims.

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson started Capital Daily, a daily newsletter emailed to subscribers with news highlights from around Victoria. The local journalism model keeps residents informed on local issues and increases the accountability of decision makers. The publication began with just one reporter and used Facebook and Google advertising to grow to over 40,000 readers. After two years, the newsletter has evolved to produce long-form investigative features. A startup media group plans to replicate the model across the country, by hiring 250 new journalists and launching 50 new outlets by 2023.

Social media influencers are using “pre-bunking” -- the practice of exposing people to misinformation and offering expert-backed explanations of why it isn’t true before they see the misinformation in the wild – as a tool to fight its spread and increase media literacy. Hundreds of thousands of people follow accounts on TikTok and Instagram run by influencers whose goals are not to change the minds of staunch conspiracy theorists, but rather to provide tools for those who are either on the fence or want to learn to communicate with people in their lives who subscribe to false information.

The Student View is a program helping youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to learn more about misinformation and navigating the media landscape. The program has been able to expand to 20 cities in the United Kingdom to provide 72 pop-up school newsrooms.

As conspiracy theories spread and misleading news stories are shared, educators are trying to battle misinformation with media literacy education. Through courses, and updated class curriculum, students from elementary to college are learning how to better differentiate between false news stories and misinformation.

11Alive, a Georgia news station, runs a program called "Verify" that helps residents get accurate information and slow the spread of disinformation. Viewers submit a form online or via an app to request any piece of information be debunked or verified. If deemed a verifiable request, a 13-member team of reporters, editors, and producers investigate it by reaching out to experts and other sources. Since disinformation spreads quickly, “Verify” uses Google Analytics and search engine optimization (SEO) to get the most exposure and gain traction when a verification article is posted.

Verificovid was started by a group of friends to combat pandemic-related misinformation in Mexico. They work with a group of government doctors to identify, track, investigate, and disprove misinformation. The group posts infographics with updated COVID-19 statistics on social media – mainly Whatsapp and Telegram – and offers medical tips via short audio messages and texts. They prioritize fast-moving misinformation that could cause the most harm and, along with sharing the truth, they investigate the origin of the misinformation and teach the public how to identify and stop fake news.

There are many refugees who could use the help that willing volunteers offer - access to services, resources, and someone who will listen to their struggles. With Facebook and other social media, those connections have become easier to make. While some try to formalize these volunteer structures, others worry that they may have unintended impacts.

In response to a wave of book bans within school districts, the Brooklyn Public Library began offering digital library cards to increase book access. The initiative, Books Unbanned, allows13 to 21-year-olds to sign up for a digital library card that provides access to an entire library of books, including those that were banned.

Fact checking and media literacy organizations are taking on the misinformation wars rampant on social media. A number of Asian-American groups are concerned about the growing falsehoods that pervade “ethnic media platforms where Asian immigrants connect.” These groups have created fact checking campaigns that have attracted high volume online, produced newsletters in multiple languages, and created a bilingual COVID-19 tracker.

The Sequim Good Governance League (SGGL) formed in response to right-wing agitators taking over positions of power and spreading misinformation. SGGL recruited progressive and moderately conservative candidates who successfully defeated incumbents with the help of dozens of volunteers they trained. Volunteers worked around the clock, sent out emails, put up signs around the town, and used their most effective tool: having one-on-one conversations with other residents. SGGL-backed candidates now hold the majority of government offices.

Even though police silenced the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, artists, writers, and filmmakers are producing work about the protests in more abstract and ambiguous ways to evade authorities. For example, the Goethe-Institut’s Hong Kong branch hosted a mixed show that included photographs of the 2019 protests that the artist had punched, ripped, or cut in order to hide protestors’ identities. Even though Chinese law criminalizes anything that the government deems as promoting “secession, subversion, or collusion with foreign powers,” several other exhibits are also featuring protest art.

New York City is among more than 55 cities, states, and counties now using ranked-choice voting, which allows residents to select a second and third choice candidate rather than choosing just one. The method was used to elect Mayor Eric Adams, with 90 percent of voters ranking more than one option on the ballot and 70 percent of those polled reporting they found the system easy to use.

Municipal officials in two southeast Michigan communities exercised their local governing power to bypass federal voting legislation that does not include Arab Americans among the "disenfranchised communities" with a right to receive election ballots in their first language. Through a city council resolution and collaboration among county officials, the Michigan Secretary of State, and Dominion Voting Systems, the cities offered Arabic ballots for the 2022 state primary, which is thought to be the first example of Arabic-language ballots being offered in a state-organized election in the United States.

With the extremist group Al-Shabab active in the country, music has been a source of trauma for Somalis with music banned in Shabab controlled territory and musicians assassinated. A reality show centered around musical performance is hoping to bring music back into public life.

After Norwegian pop band A-ha made headlines for using an electric vehicle in 1989, the government began implementing incentives for people to drive the cars. These perks made electric vehicles so popular in the Scandinavian country that they had to start scaling some of them back. Still, by the end of 2020, nearly 90 percent of all cars sold were rechargeable.

Musical Empowerment provides mentors for children who do not have access to music education in their community. About 160 student-teachers mentor children in instruments like guitar, piano, violin, brass, saxophone, and even voice. The group uses grants and donations to help with technological and internet disparities, as well as provide instruments if needed. Learning music helps young people in many areas of their lives, including self-confidence and self-discipline. Mentors are paired with a mentee based on instrument interest and compatibility, and also experience personal growth from the relationship.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, founder of the Hip Hop Caucus, is using music and comedy to highlight the intersection of climate change and racial justice. His group released a music video talking about the Flint water crisis and they produced a stand-up comedy special about climate change. By using the power of storytelling, he believes he’s able to bring young people and their stories into the climate movement.

Renaming the Washington Redskins to remove a racist name and logo will require a difficult and delicate process juggling a host of issues that other professional and college sports franchises have successfully navigated in the past. Often a years-long process, rebranding involves choosing a name and color scheme that replace the harmful imagery with a positive name that passes trademark tests, wins fan support, maintains brand equity and continuity built over decades, and can be reduced to a simple logo that looks good on helmets and in all media, from TV screens to smartphones.

In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, the 'big three' major record labels - Sony, Warner, and Universal have taken meaningless actions to address the racial inequity in the music industry. Donations, diversity panels, and statements of support fail to address the lack of diversity among executive leadership, or the lack of ownership and power the artists have over their own music, nor do they address the lack of diversity in the types of artists being invested in or the lack of professional support for black artists. Their gestures are only paying lip service to racial justice.

Molly Burhans, a young cartographer and environmentalist, is using GIS technology to map out the Catholic Church’s global property holdings to encourage them to improve the environmental impact on the lands they own. Burhans’ organization called GoodLands has been working with various parishes and dioceses to help Church leaders — including Pope Francis — understand their vast landholdings. While finances and COVID-19 have impacted her progress, Burhans’ maps have been used for other purposes like mapping Catholic radio stations in Africa and tracking the whereabouts of priests accused of sexual abuse.

Mexico City's 11-year-old video surveillance system, one of the most advanced in the world, was a massive investment in public safety: about $660 million to date to cover the city with more than 30,000 cameras and other devices. Like so much else in Mexico's law enforcement apparatus, it has done little to control crime but instead has become a tool of corruption and official impunity. While the cameras have helped keep tourists and elites safer, the vast majority of crimes go unreported and only a tiny number of police investigations benefit from the surveillance system.

Logically is a fact-checking app that combines AI technology and human research to assess and label the truthfulness of news articles. The app has about 20,000 users after a soft launch in the UK, with a full launch planned for late 2020. The AI technology, a feature that makes the app unique, tries to match news claims to other sources and then human researchers take over to make a final judgment. The app has been busy fact-checking the extensive Covid-19 related misinformation. Some aspects, like technology glitches and slow fact-checking responses from researchers, still need to be worked out.

Kyrgyzstan is using technology to tackle corruption and reduce costs. The country is centralizing and digitizing government services with help from Estonia. It is also using biometrics in elections to reduce the chances of rigged ballots and build public trust.

German news site Zeit Online helped 600 pairs of people with opposing political views meet to discuss the issues in person. The "My Country Talks" initiative was so well-reviewed that Zeit Online is now partnering with a dozen other German media organizations to grow the project, as well as a variety of groups outside the country.