Eric Gordon

Professor Gordon studies emerging media and public participation in cities. He is particularly interested in how people’s trust in institutions is shaped by media and technology. He has served as an expert advisor for local and national governments, as well as NGOs around the world, designing responsive tools and processes that help organizations transform to meet their stated values. He has co-created over a dozen digital games and apps for public sector use and advised organizations on how to build their own inclusive and meaningful processes. He is the author of two books about media and cities – The Urban Spectator (Dartmouth, 2010) and Net Locality (Blackwell, 2011, with Adriana de Souza e Silva). And he is the editor of Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (MIT Press, 2016, with Paul Mihailidis) and Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave, 2021, with Vicki Rapti). His book, Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (Oxford University Press, 2020, with Gabrial Mugar) examines practices in government, journalism and NGOs that reimagine civic innovation beyond efficiency. His new book is called Listening at Scale: AI, Trust, and the Transformation of Public Engagement (MIT Press, 2026).