Mapping the Intersection of Journalism and Civic Technology
By: Josh Stearns
Tags: Opengov, Journalism, Civictech, building journalism with communities

Is Journalism Itself A Civic Technology?

Jennifer Brandel:

I came away feeling excited that the work I’ve been doing with Curious Nation and Curious City does fit squarely in Laurenellen’s definition of civic tech, as well as community organizing, as those were both terms that never occurred to me to employ. One of the participants, Whitney May, shared a formula that got stuck in my craw: information + invitation = participation. It felt like the gathering was proof positive of that in action — by learning more about what civic tech means and can include, and being invited to identify with it and use that term, I feel far more likely to pay attention to and participate in other convenings / dialogues labeled as such.

information + invitation = participation

Jeremy Hay:

I was always turned off by the term civic journalism because contributing to and being a part of the civic fabric should already be a key thread in conscientious journalism practice. On the other hand, it’s exciting and seems particularly relevant these days — when technology has so revised journalism’s possibilities while at the same time disrupted its models — to think about civic tech being a strategy or approach used to further good journalism in a way that might also help stabilize and revitalize journalism as an institution.

So, as I came to think about it in Chicago, civic tech (in the context of journalism) is:

First an approach that can be used to effectively develop the framework and landscape of a journalistic endeavor — by using tech methods and tools to engage usefully with a community.

an approach that can be used to effectively develop the framework and landscape of a journalistic endeavor — by using tech methods and tools to engage usefully with a community. Second , civic tech can be the framework for a news outlet to engage with and remain usefully entwined with a community, both as an operating system and a beacon that helps maintain its purpose (just as truth and fairness and verification are). Basically, if a media organization consistently engages with the community, works with it to the extent that the community helps define the news and information needs it has that it needs the media organization to meet, that creates a value. That value is one that the media organization holds onto, that it strives to uphold, and then you’ve got a infrastructure of and for civic engagement that is built on an equal footing. That leads to the next:

, civic tech can be the framework for a news outlet to engage with and remain usefully entwined with a community, both as an operating system and a beacon that helps maintain its purpose (just as truth and fairness and verification are). Basically, That value is one that the media organization holds onto, that it strives to uphold, and then you’ve got a infrastructure of and for civic engagement that is built on an equal footing. That leads to the next: Third, it is a result, one in which a journalistic entity becomes self-consciously a part of the technological infrastructure serving a community.

Thinking about journalism as part of the civic infrastructure’s technology could be a useful way to conceive in contemporary terms of journalism’s actual role. Also, it would be more useful, I now believe, to think about civic tech as an approach to getting to where journalism is an organic aspect of a community’s technological civic infrastructure, rather than appending civic tech to journalism (i.e. as a new form or model of journalism called civic tech journalism or something like that, which just seems faddish and dilutes actual civic tech).

In other, plainer words, civic tech is not journalism, civic tech is an approach/method/set of practices that journalism should make good use of as it strives to situate itself civically and find viable and sustainable models. One good approach might be to come up with a set of principles influenced by civic tech that could be applied to journalism.