Curious Citizens: Whose Voices Are Heard in “People-Powered” Public Media?

Abstract

For decades, news narratives centered the voices of elites over sources with lived experience, even when journalists said they did not intend to favor elites. A new technology platform, Hearken, invites audiences to influence reporting by building “gates” that allow people to move between the roles of news creator and news consumer. This affords an opportunity to assess whether audience participation influences journalists to include more diverse perspectives in reporting. In stories produced by public radio stations using the Hearken platform, sources with lived experience exceeded recent patterns of elite vs. non-elite sourcing in commercial and public media in the U.S.