Shirish Kulkarni, News Innovation Research Fellow at Media Cymru, takes over the blog this week to introduce Media Cymru and the BBC's new report, News for All
I’m going to come straight out and say it. We’re never going to understand our audiences by looking at dashboards on a computer screen.
Whatever those dashboards may tell us about page views, unique visits, durations or bounces they’re never going to tell us even half the story about our relationship with citizens. For a start, those dashboards may give us some insights about the people who are engaging with journalism, but tell us precisely nothing about the people who aren’t.
Most importantly though, dashboards only reflect the journalism which exists, not the journalism which could or should exist. That would be fine of course, if everything in journalism was working brilliantly, but of course there’s very little evidence to suggest that’s true.
We need to find new, and deeper ways to engage with our citizens, and truly understand what they want and need from journalism - so that’s what we tried to do with our Media Cymru News for All project. Of course the best way to understand what people want is simply to ask them - but the important and exciting bit is who you ask, what you ask, and how you ask it.
For us, the who focused on some of south Wales’ most marginalised communities. The what wasn’t about exploring a new format or testing a particular story, it was about understanding their day to day, to try to figure out how journalism might make their lives better, easier or more fun. And the how was using the Design Justice principles, which are about centring the voices of those most impacted by design decisions and treating them as experts in their own lives.
Perhaps the way we embodied those principles is best demonstrated by the fact that our participatory research sessions were not facilitated by me, or our partners at the BBC. Instead, they were led by Rhiannon White and Amira Hayat, who are themselves members of the community we were working with. By treating our group as experts, rather than “subjects”, we uncovered a range of valuable and striking insights - many of which challenge traditional journalism industry narratives.
Take, for instance, the notions of “news avoidance” or poor news literacy as challenges for the industry. The reality is that our group cares deeply about the world and their place in it. That’s because, for marginalised people, much of “the news” is existential - whether that’s the cost of living, racist violence, or LGBTQ+ rights. They want the news to help them navigate those existential challenges but, too often, when they look for the kind of sense-making they need from journalism, they find the shelves bare.
Similarly, they are incredibly news literate. Our group told us they understand: the motivations of media barons, the centralisation of ownership in journalism, the lack of diversity in newsrooms and the harmful narratives about them those conditions foster. Of course that’s precisely why they’re choosing not to engage with that journalism, because all those factors define the nature and tone of the journalism which is delivered to them
As Abdi Yusuf, co-chair of The Grange Pavilion (the community space where we held our sessions) powerfully put it, “Would you sit through something that was dehumanising you, not representing you correctly, misrepresenting you? You wouldn’t, you would disengage. It’s simple.”
We didn’t just focus on the problems though. It was most important to us to explore solutions to all those challenges, and find ways of better meeting people’s information needs. Our group developed three “prototypes” that they believe will deliver better journalism. What was striking about the discussions was that they largely ignored new formats or platforms. That makes sense of course, because if a story is attacking or harming you then it doesn’t really matter whether it’s on Instagram or TikTok - it’s still harming you. That’s significant, because new formats or platforms - what we might call “output side” approaches - are largely where newsroom innovation efforts are focused.
Instead, our group wants to see “input side” innovation, focused on how stories are surfaced, chosen and researched. That might be community forums - where journalists, communities and those with power (MP’s, MS’s, councillors, police chiefs etc.) are brought together - or journalists embedding themselves in marginalised communities, to report on systemic issues through a different lens. In essence, our group wants journalists to spend time with them and accurately reflect and represent them from a position of knowledge and understanding. Surely that’s not too much to ask?
An important feature of the way we worked was that we hadn’t predefined our outcomes and were open to anything. This meant that it was unexpected, but thrilling, to find that our group reported feeling both more willing and more able to take part in wider civic and democratic activity as a result of taking part in News for All. I think this was because they saw the change that was happening as a result of their work, and so there was a value to them from being involved.
Ultimately, we’re not here to “save” status quo journalism. For me, journalism exists to help us create and support healthy societies that we can all contribute to. To do that we need to be deeply engaged and connected with all our communities. We hope that with News for All, we’ve offered one approach that might help us do that.