We’re excited to be part of a research initiative recently announced by the University of Wisconsin. The project, Amplifying Marginalized Voices in Public Deliberation: Inclusive Community Conversations About Inequities in Partnership with Journalists and J-School will train journalists and journalism students to facilitate conversations with marginalized groups, to determine whether this approach will successfully amplify these groups’ voices in public dialogues.

As stated in the funding proposal, Cortico will train journalists and partnered students from local universities in five cities across the United States in how to reach out to marginalized groups and then facilitate public dialogues about inequities. The journalists then work with the students to host conversations, analyze them and use them in news stories. Afterwards, the research team will collect data — surveys with participants/students, interviews with community partners (newsrooms/ and J-School instructors) and textual analyses of the resulting media products — to determine whether coverage of inequities’ solutions is improved because of the discursive intervention.

Read More:

• Press release from the University of Wisconsin
• Full Proposal from Susan Robinson, Susan Robinson, professor of journalism and mass communications