All around us, technology-mediated social participation has been harnessed for remarkable social benefits. New thrusts in basic research and engineering are likely to move beyond existing socio-technical media to produce new participatory systems spanning people, computation, communication and action.These developments could produce profound transformations in health care, community safety, disaster response, life-long learning, business innovation, energy sustainability, environmental protection, and other spheres of important national priorities.

New research opportunities, in the social and computational fields, and challenging needs for the development of research methods, analysis tools and metrics, are evolving.
To better understand human social interaction, we need to develop socially intelligent systems in which human collaboration is mediated by machines.

The Technology Mediated Social Participation workshops are an effort sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, aiming to draw up a strong scientific research agenda and educational recommendations for creating a cohesive community that generates the foundational science, engineering, and graduate training necessary for a new era of social participation technologies.