Fred Johnson is a documentary maker, media educator, writer, communication policy analyst, and full time faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Boston where he directs the Community Media and Technology Program. He has been making documentaries and designing and implementing media and technology education and training programs for over twenty years in a wide range of settings, from community media centers to national education initiatives, colleges and universities.

Johnson, a long standing community media practitioner and media researcher, is a former telecommunications policy associate for the Telecommunications Consumer Coalition and the United Church of Christ Office of Communications. He consults in media and community development with government, non-profits, educational and community groups. In 1999-2000 he coordinated the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture's Digital Directions project, a national planning process funded by the Ford Foundation looking at the impact of digital media on the world of non-commercial media arts. In 2007 he published a research study on Community Media in collaboration with the Benton Foundation. A copy of the report, 'What's Going on in Community Media', published by the Benton Foundation, can be downloaded at this web address: http://www.benton.org/benton_files/CMReport.pdf

Johnson is a co-founder of Media Working Group, a media arts production, education and research organization. He has been making documentary and video art since the late seventies. Much of his work has been focused on relationships of land, constructed space, urbanism and telecommunications. His work is grounded in an abiding interest in the environment, consciousness and the human capacity for language, culture and change.

Johnson's documentaries have appeared on the Learning and Discovery Channels, WNET-NY, Kentucky Educational Television, BBC 2 and BBC's World Service. As a recipient of a Television Arts Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission he was sited at the BBC's Community Programme Unit in London. While there he produced Future on the Line and Death on Delivery and was subsequently commissioned to produce Hybrid City, a critical look at the politics of urban space. More recently he co-produced, Coal Black Voices, with Jean Donohue for regional PBS, and, Local Voices, Local Needs, a telecommunications advocacy documentary confronting proposed national telecom legislation.