Engaged Journalism in Rural Communities

The (Ir)Relevance of Audience Studies in Journalism Education

“…In addition to an increasing reliance on audience analytic data, many journalists have also embraced the idea that audiences should play a larger, more central role within news production, leading to calls for newsrooms to more explicitly collaborate with and seek feedback from their audiences. These calls go by a number of names, including “engaged journalism,” “participatory journalism,” and “relational journalism” (Lewis, 2018; Schmidt et al, 2020; Wenzel, 2019), all of which stem from the now widely accepted notion within the news industry: journalists must more actively consider and work alongside their audiences if they are to recover public trust and financial stability. Again, and similar to audience analytic data, the ways in which journalists pursue audience participation in news production vary from one newsroom to the next: some focus primarily on digital communication, while others focus more on cultivating offline, in-person conversations between journalists and community members (Nelson, 2021; Wenzel, 2020).…”

“…From 2000 to 2009, there were seven articles with “audience” as a keyword published in Journalism and 11 in Journalism Studies ; from 2010 to 2019, this number jumped to 31 in Journalism and 44 in Journalism Studies . Now, there exists not only a growing body of journalism studies research focused on how journalists perceive and approach their audiences (Lawrence et al, 2018; Nelson, 2021; Zamith, 2018) but also a similarly growing body of literature focused on those audiences perceive and approach the news (Edgerly, 2017; Palmer, 2018; Wenzel, 2019). Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink (2016) refer to this as “the audience turn” in journalism.…”

“…Newsrooms now devote considerable time and resources to collecting and monitoring audience data in hopes of better understanding how people interact with the content they produce (Carlson, 2018; Christin & Petre, 2020; Nelson & Webster, 2016). News publishers have also begun more explicitly pursuing opportunities to communicate—or “engage”—with their audiences in hopes that doing so will improve public trust in news at a moment when journalistic credibility remains low (Ritter, 2020; Wenzel, 2019). As news producers have shifted their attention to their relationship with their audiences, journalism scholars have followed suit, leading to an “audience turn” in journalism studies (Meijer, 2020).…”

Representing Disability, D/deaf, and Mad Artists and Art in Journalism: Identifying Ableist Fault Lines and Promising Crip Practices of Representation

“…And, even though Internet access is an issue facing some communities, research into rural journalism suggests that local content stemming from small communities may be more resilient than that. For example, rural journalism in the United States has been shown to be quite participatory when local residents can share their stories with local media (Wenzel, 2019). What's more, as Daniela Stehlik (2017, p. 78) points out, place identity is significant, and is often marginalized by urban dominant culture and its assumptions about rural "isolation" as undesirable and absolute.…”

Community Storytelling Network, Expressive Digital Media Use, and Civic Engagement

“…Second, the study tests the moderating roles of expressive digital media use on all civic outcomes in a more comprehensive way while extending traditional storytelling network to include digital storytelling actors. Third, while CIT studies (Abril et al, 2015; Matsaganis et al, 2014; Nah & Yamamoto, 2019; Nah et al, 2016, 2021; Wenzel, 2019) tested the theory in various contexts (e.g., urban and rural communities as well as ethnically diverse communities), the current study further examines the validity and applicability of the theory in a more ethnically homogeneous community.…”