Use Cases

Research AMP is be a powerful tool for mapping research areas and building scholarly communities. To help you think though how you might want to use the site, here are some case studies of Research AMP in action.

MediaWell

MediaWell (https://mediawell.ssrc.org) is the first instance of a Research AMP platform. It was designed in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help consolidate an expanding and multidisciplinary scholarly literature on mis- and disinformation. MediaWell collects and synthesizes research on how to mitigate the influence of false, misleading, or hateful narratives online, build resilient democratic institutions, and empower communities to inform themselves. Through publications and outreach, the project summarizes research findings, identifies gaps in scholarship, contributes to policy decisions, and translates academic knowledge for a broad audience of scholars, journalists, and interested citizens. We hope these efforts will prove useful to regulatory, industry, and institutional efforts to strengthen political discourse, reclaim the democratic potential of social media, reduce the spread of hatred and incivility, and strengthen our democracies.

Just Tech

The Just Tech Platform is a dynamic digital resource that aggregates, curates, and distills research-based insight abouts the relationship between technological development, inequity, and social justice. Through field reviews, essays, interviews, and researcher profiles, Just Tech engages a field of research and practice as it stands and moves, as scholars, journalists, artists, and activists delineate the contours of a field that cannot reside within a single discipline or the academy. The platform is a free resource developed by the Just Tech program of the Social Science Research Council. It is the second instance of the Council’s Research Area Mapping Platform (RAMP) Initiative. To learn more about how to use the Just Tech Platform, please consult the Just Tech Platform introduction here.

Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism Research Collective

The Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism Research Collective is a global network of media makers, scholars, and activists working with our communities identify and dismantle colorism and anti-Black racism. We turn to local and regional media and popular culture as both archive and tool—an archive in which to trace culturally specific histories of representation; and a tool with which to raise awareness, mobilize, and inform. We prioritize perspectives grounded in local languages that are familiar with regional understandings of ethnicity, sect, religion, gender, and class—as well as race. CcRrrC hosts these perspectives in a transnational, comparative frame. We do so because we understand that white supremacy is a global phenomenon that is manifest in specific vernaculars. Our work looks to support and sharpen tools available to communities as they combat colorism and anti-Black racism. CcRrrC is an initiative developed by the editorial team at Lateral (https://csalateral.org/), the open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the Cultural Studies Association. The CcRrrC platform has been developed to further Lateral's editorial mission to design and execute initatives that amplify marginalized voices and offer non-traditional paths to publication.

Intersections

In 2005, the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs (HRLI) sought to promote work that considers the role of religion in policy, media, and academia. The Initiative asked a series of questions: How do the world’s religions influence public policy and international affairs? Why are religions a source for both conflict and peace? While informing power and legitimacy in many countries and cultures, why has religion typically been overlooked in the social sciences, policy studies, military training and diplomacy? Intersections is a new digital platform that will serve as an accessible archive of work produced through the Luce initiative, as well as generate new content and resources on topics relevant for the study of religion and politics globally. It will serve as a platform for work produced through the Religion and the Public Sphere program at SSRC as the program seeks to advance scholarship on religion through scholarly exchanges, research, and publications. The platform is organized around a set of research themes that brings to the fore past work associated with HLRI, as well as emerging scholarship, journalism, and policy work centered around on religion at work in the world today. The platform is currently in development and will launch in winter 2023.

Play and Wellbeing

Play and Wellbeing is a public pedagogy project that compiles and synthesizes research, commentaries, and original multimodal works that address the many dimensions of play across the lifespan, and their impacts on wellbeing. In doing so, this resources aims to promote a capacious view of play, one that includes the domains of games, tinkering and experimentation, digital exploration, communal traditions, curricular interventions, and all forms of free play. Organized by research topics that cut across settings and interdisciplinary fields, the resources contained on this site are meant to deepen understandings of play and wellbeing for multiple audiences, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The site will launch December 1, 2023.