Who We Are
The Boston College Media Research and Action Project (MRAP), founded in 1986, provides training and technical assistance to community and grassroots organizations. In collaboration with community and grassroots organizations, we address: the problems of negative interaction of community and mass media; and the lack of resources that community organizations and groups experience when they attempt to change negative stereotypical images of their communities and their issues as commonly portrayed in the mass media.
Media influence public opinion that in turn influences legislation and the allocation of public resources. Even as media impacts social change, marginalized communities commonly lack the needed resources to overcome barriers to their participation in media. Therefore mass media is an increasingly critical arena for community capacity building.
William Gamson, professor
of sociology, social theorist and former president of the American
Sociological Association, and graduate student colleagues at
Boston College founded the Boston College Media Research and
Action Project (MRAP). MRAP develops networks of community non-profit,
labor and advocacy organizations with whom MRAP conducts collaborative
action research on media related topics.
MRAP began funded projects of direct action with community organizations
in 1997, after several months of collaborative planning with
the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute's Empowerment and Change
Project (MLRI).
MRAP's primary focus
of its work is with non-profit organizations in New England.
Secondarily, MRAP collaborates with two national organizations
that offer technical assistance, training and support for the
development of public policy to community organizations and groups
around the country. These organizations, the Preamble Center
and Grassroots Policy Project of New York City and Washington
D.C. share MRAP's vision of providing strategic development training
to community organizations. MRAP's vision includes the development
of a national media resource network, the Community Media and
Internet Resource Network, including Internet and organizational
linkages to other media research centers in other areas of the
country.
The proposed media Internet network will share best practices and needed research information about how media impacts communities in other regions of the country. MRAP wants to research how communities interact with media and/or develop partnerships to work proactively with mass media; and to bring that information to New England and share it through a Community Media and Internet Resource Network web server.