“If you want people to trust you, do trustworthy things," say the organisers of a six-month project between BBC and Media Cymru to understand why marginalised groups do not engage with journalism
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Too often, we think about news engagement and avoidance in terms of clicks and metrics, when really, we need go beyond the data and speak to real people about what’s really going on.
We might attempt to do this in the form of focus groups or audience interviews, but the trouble with those frameworks is they are agenda-driven. And the people you want to get onside are already wary of you having an agenda.
So is there another way? Shirish Kulkarni is a news innovation research fellow at Media Cymru, and he has just wrapped up the News For All project, a six-month collaboration with the BBC to understand why marginalised communities do not engage with the news.
He enlisted the help of a community organisation and space called Grange Pavillion, to put on monthly meet-ups in Cardiff.
In this week's podcast, Kulkarni joins Abdi Yusuf and Rhiannon White, both from the Grange Pavillion, to reveal how they managed to get people to lower their guards and engage with discussions about the news. Stay tuned for trust-building tips borrowed from the world of theatre so you can do this for yourself, too.
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