Exploring Future Media Ecologies with Community Organizations: Designing for Uses, Needs and Aspirations

In an environment of rapidly evolving media technologies, under-served and disenfranchised communities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of changing media. HCI and CSCW research has been exploring the participatory potential of such media technologies (e.g. LLMs, personalized curatorial algorithms, participatory media etc.), but arguably future media technologies are conceptualized and developed without the particular needs and aspirations of community-led and participatory organizations. In this paper, we build on this line of work to understand how digital media enables or hinders community organizations in connecting and managing relationships with service beneficiaries and their audiences. We find challenges around supporting effective outreach and networking, the means of connecting to and informing community members, complexities of developing intelligible information ecosystems and factors affecting their ability to scale in a controlled manner. We contribute actionable insights for media co-design, as well as a set of design provocations for expanded thinking around potential directions for media technology to support these organizations.