Working Groups
Check out the ongoing working groups at PTML
Working Groups (WGs) are open to both lab members and non-lab members, creating a space where people from different backgrounds, disciplines, and career stages can connect and collaborate. Our WGs bridge the lab and the broader community, encouraging the exchange of ideas, expertise, and perspectives. Whether you are already involved with the lab or simply interested in contributing to a specific topic, everyone is welcome to participate.
We also encourage community-driven initiatives. If you have an idea for a new Working Group or would like to propose a topic that is not currently represented, please feel free to write to us. We’d be happy to discuss your idea and help explore how it could become a new Working Group.
Learn more about a specific group
Below is a list of our current Working Groups. Each group is coordinated by one or more leads who can provide more information about ongoing activities and how to get involved. If you are interested in joining a Working Group, please reach out directly to the listed lead(s)—they will be happy to welcome you and answer any questions you may have.
Hype and the Futures of AI
Chaired by Aimee Rinehart & Nsisong Udosen
Welcome to AI Hype, a collaborative working group at the Public Tech Media Lab dedicated to critically examining how news coverage, public discourse, and cultural narratives shape the perception, development, and adoption of artificial intelligence across journalism and other industries. AI Hype brings together researchers, journalists, and technologists to promote responsible and evidence-based dialogue about artificial intelligence in the public sphere.
AI, Intimacy & Mental Health
Chaired by Facundo Suenzo
This group aims to examine how new technological infrastructures are reshaping intimacy, sociability, and mental health. Bringing together scholars working on dating platforms, AI companions, and algorithmically mediated relationships, it explores how these technologies reconfigure desire, trust, and social bonds — and what their growing role in emotional and psychological life means for gender and sexuality.
Critical Platform Studies
Chaired by Justin Yeung
This group is dedicated to facilitating conversations among scholars, practitioners, and activists to better understand how we can study small and large platforms more critically, ethically, and responsibly.
Technology & Gender
Chaired by Jingqi Yang
Technology and Gender is a working group that brings together people interested in the intersections of technology, digital media, and gender. Broadly, we’re interested in questions around how technologies and digital platforms may shape gendered perceptions, identities, norms, and inequalities. And, conversely, how existing gender norms and power structures may influence the design, use, and social consequences of technologies.
Investigating Data Centers
Chaired by Charis Papaevangelou
The Working Group on Investigating Data Centers focuses on how to scrutinize the dizzyingly rapid expansion of data centers globally, one of the most contentious political issues currently. The group will bring together investigative journalists and academics from all around the world to share and discuss best practices, insights, experiences, and challenges, exploring how we may best contribute to the public understanding of these infrastructures.
Media Ethics
Chaired by Colin Porlezza, Lavinia Rotili & Emma Black
This working group examines the ethical and governance dimensions of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies in news production and journalism. Bringing together journalists, technologists, and researchers from different disciplines, it examines how existing regulatory frameworks and governance instruments address the ethical challenges AI raises in media and journalism. Through empirical and multidisciplinary research, it provides a space for practitioners and scholars alike to critically engage with what responsible and ethical AI in journalism actually requires.
Narratives of AI
Chaired by Yanshu Sybil Wang
This group looks at the narratives that shape how AI is understood, promoted, and contested. By discussing how metaphors and cultural frames circulate across academic research, industry, and public debate, it explores their influence on literacy, trust, and adoption.
Open Source Investigations
Chaired by Guillén Torres, Johanna Wild & Tomás Dodds
This working group on open-source investigations in journalism brings together reporters, researchers, and technologists to develop, share, and refine methods for gathering, verifying, and analyzing publicly available digital information and reflect on the ongoing institutionalization of OSINV in journalism.
Public Interest Technologies
Chaired by Juliane A. Lischka & Tomás Dodds
The Public Interest Technology Working Group (PIT4C) is a RISE-funded i interdisciplinary group of researchers advancing communication technology in the public interest. We conceptualize, design, and test recommenders, platforms, AI systems, and communication infrastructures that serve democratic information needs.