Towards a Civic Communications Ecosystem for Thriving Community

What’s possible when the public and journalists engage to support communities to thrive? Engagement is about authentic connections, valuing people, and mutual exchanges so that what’s best for individuals and the community as a whole emerges. With both journalists and other community members present at Experience Engagement, some conversations also pointed towards a communications ecosystem that supports the civic health of communities. Beyond journalism, as we know it, this civic communications ecosystem would provide robust information, feedback, inclusive dialogue, strategy and action for serving community goals. Read more of this from co-author Peggy Holman.

Educate, Empathize, Engage: Twelve Ways for Editors to Reach and Relate to Untapped Communities

Identifying reliable sources and reaching broad audiences are challenging tasks, especially when covering “untapped” communities that have little experience in the media spotlight. Interacting with such populations requires time, skill, and, in some cases, an entirely new approach to journalism … In this set of suggestions for editors seeking to reflect diverse perspectives through community engagement, [contributing] editors share their thoughts on powerful, people-centered journalism.

Special Series: Redefining Engagment

As Ben DeJarnette writes in the kick-off piece to this special series, “There perhaps was no journalistic buzzword more widely discussed in 2015 than ‘engagement.’” The series, writes DeJarnette, was inspired by Experience Engagement, a four-day participatory “un-conference” hosted by Journalism That Matters and the Agora Journalism Center. Over the next two weeks, this series will explore the progress, promise and potential challenges of community engagement in journalism.

The Problem With Inclusion

Our focus on inclusion is misplaced as long as it fails to change the structures and practices that promote exclusion in the first place. Inclusion is inherently about exclusion. No matter what the particular subject — voting, education, technology, you name it — whenever we talk about the need to include people we implicitly acknowledge that the status quo is exclusive — that there are people who are currently not included in X, Y, or Z, but who could be. That’s the language we use — those of us living comfortably in our own inclusion: “Not included.”

News as Collaborative Intelligence: Correcting the Myths about News in the Digital Age

The shift to online news is increasing engagement, adding more perspectives, and introducing more witnesses and a wider spectrum of voices to the media industry … In a new paper from Tom Rosenstiel, the paradoxical state of news in the digital age is weighed not in a manner of whether we are better off or worse, but instead in better understanding what is better, what we are losing, and what we can do about it.

Hearken

Hearken is a consulting and technology company that “help organizations create relevant services and build resilient networks through community engagement.” Hearken began as a public Q&A technology platform and now focuses on processes of change that are enabled by their tech offerings.

The Presence and Use of Interactive Features on News Websites

Although interactive features, such as comment sections are now the norm on news websites. Based on theoretical concepts of interactivity and convergence, we analyze whether diverse sites are similar in the provision and use of interactive features online. Results reveal many differences in the adoption and use of interactive features based on medium and target. Reasons for differences across these sites are discussed.

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