While trust in media is low, communities always find ways to share news and information—here’s what we learned from our latest listening project.
By Ellie Mejía
City Bureau fellows Bia Medious and Sajedah Al-khzaleh interview each other at the Harold Washington Library. Smaller branches are key local institutions where neighborhood residents build relationships and find trustworthy information. (Photo: Sarah Conway)
Since 2016 the Public Newsroom has brought people together to discuss, debate and deconstruct how news and information is created and shared in our communities on Chicago’s South and West Sides. This April, we relaunched it as a monthly digital workshop series meant to showcase people-powered projects that provide mutual aid, address local information needs and cultivate joy.
Part of this ongoing evolution has been a months-long research project to better understand how Chicagoans address local information needs at the grassroots level. While City Bureau reporters and staff are often asking the questions, “What information do you want and need, and what are the barriers to getting it?” this survey focused on how community information systems are already working, with the goal of understanding how we can best support and amplify this work. We’re excited to share the results—not just what we learned from interviewees, but what we learned through the process.
Who did we interview?
Based on our years of outreach and partnerships, we identified people who have deep connections to different neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. In late March, we reached out to request interviews with them.
We spoke with 18 people for about an hour each, and each person was paid for their time. We developed a questionnaire to get answers on these broad questions: What kinds of information do people want, and what is preventing them from accessing it? What are ways that people are exchanging and getting information despite those obstacles? How are people organizing to meet information needs within their neighborhoods, and how can we support?
An important note: Interviewees were given anonymity so they could speak freely about their work, so we are not making our full internal insights report public. This process was just as much for trust-building and mutual learning as it was for research.
Interviewee neighborhood connections
The people we spoke with claimed connections to different neighborhoods across the South and West Sides. Here’s the breakdown of the different neighborhoods represented in our interviewee pool.
Englewood and Little Village (with four interviewees each)
North Lawndale and Pilsen (three interviews each)
Auburn Gresham, Back of the Yards, Berwyn, Cicero and Logan Square (two interviews)
Austin, Bridgeview, Brighton Park, East Side, Gage Park, Garfield Park, Chicago Lawn, Hegewisch, Hyde Park, South Chicago, South Shore and Woodlawn. (one interview each).
Issue areas
Most of the people we interviewed worked for or volunteered with community groups or nonprofits. The chart above shows the various issue areas represented by those organizations. Note that each organization may have been tagged with more than one issue area.
As with any other project, there are some caveats to acknowledge. We only interviewed 18 people. This allowed us to have deep and nuanced conversations, but it is a limited scope. As the neighborhood list makes clear, we also didn’t reach a decent chunk of neighborhoods. This is the beginning of a process that we hope to repeat regularly—not just to make sure we expand our geographic reach, but also to ensure we capture shifting needs. These interviews took place in April, when the top headline was the COVID-19 crisis, and already we can imagine that some information needs may look different given the actions and conversations around racism and policing taking place today.
Additionally, most of the people who agreed to an interview are either employed by or affiliated with a community group or nonprofit organization, some of which had specific focus such as supporting immigrant communities. While we have other mechanisms for surveying neighborhood residents who are not affiliated with any community group (post-event surveys, Information Aid Network, on-the-ground reporting), their voices are often missing from conversations about information needs. As we standardize these deep listening practices, we will plan to implement surveys and other methods of feedback collection to make sure those insights are included.
What kinds of information do people want?
Overwhelmingly, interviewees told us that people wanted resources that could meet their basic needs, including food access, housing, financial stability, wellness and/or health care, and education and/or childcare. (See also: Is Your Journalism a Luxury or Necessity?) COVID-19 crisis made these needs more acute; individuals and families who may not have been concerned about these before the shelter-in-place order might be thinking about it now.
Another significant information gap emerged around investment, gentrification and displacement. Some neighborhoods represented by these interviews have been going through gentrification for decades while others anticipate it. But the questions that we heard across interviews came down to: What are the early signs of gentrification in my neighborhood? Who is investing in this new development near me, and what will it be? Will it benefit residents, both during the construction process and when it is built? And will it lead to displacement?
Other topics that were mentioned by multiple interviewees: Immigrants’ rights (especially in the context of the Trump administration), information about the civic and electoral processes and coverage created by neighborhood residents themselves.
What are barriers to information access?
We identified six major factors that play out across Chicago’s information and media landscape, and it’s important to note that they often interact with and complicate one another.
Lack of context and history: One interviewee pointed out that even a question as seemingly simple as “how is my property tax calculated?” relates back to complex structural issues like the legacy of redlining. And while some of that history and context may be discussed in classrooms, not everybody has equal access to that education, and not everyone has the time or resources to personally seek it out. Notably, some interviewees identified this as a major reason that people don’t trust mainstream media. When news media rush to break a story, it can result in confusing or incomplete information and erode trust. Others said this lack of context is why they feel traditional media aims to meet the needs of white, middle- or high-income audiences, while leaving others behind.
Inaccessibility of public services: Across the board, interviewees said that the City of Chicago and local public agencies are not disseminating information in clear, easy-to-find ways. This is exacerbated by two related obstacles: language and technological barriers. This scarcity is even more acute for less common languages (though even Spanish-language materials are hard to come by) particularly ones that are mostly spoken rather than written.
With social distancing measures in place, we’ve become more reliant on digital communications. But many Chicagoans don’t have access to the necessary equipment or an Internet connection. Libraries are crucial in closing this technology gap, as anyone can access a computer, an Internet connection or even schedule a tech one-on-one at Chicago Public Library branches. But while the shelter-in-place order was in effect, those resources were unavailable. Even as libraries reopen people may feel hesitant to make use of their in-person services.
For people with the means to set up an Internet connection, sometimes the physical infrastructure simply does not support it. When the pandemic hit, Comcast made a splashy announcement that anyone could have free access to their Wifi hotspots—one interviewee pointed out “they don’t exist” near her South Side home.
This is a structural barrier to information access stemming from the city’s history of segregation and disinvestment, of which we encountered a few. One interviewee said that even if she wanted a newspaper subscription, misconceptions about and fear of her neighborhood would prevent deliveries from taking place.
Another interviewee said that Black population loss, fueled by ongoing disinvestment, led to Austin residents being isolated, preventing them from learning about resources and opportunities in the neighborhood. Two interviewees mentioned the decline of the block club, a common site of community building, information exchange and resource sharing. Though many block clubs across Chicago are still up and running, many have gradually lost members and become inactive as population has declined in the neighborhood.
How are people exchanging information?
More so than any specific medium, interviewees stressed that people want information from people they already trust—whether that’s family, friends, coworkers, parents of their children’s classmates and so on. That’s why local institutions like libraries, schools, daycares, churches and community-centered nonprofits, with staffers who interact with residents on a regular basis, are better-positioned to be trusted sources of information compared to news media that are not based within the community.
In-person communication was highly valued as a way to build trust and establish a rapport. This is likely why fliering was such a common strategy for nonprofits and community groups. A flier itself is an analog, accessible medium—a thoughtful outreach plan to disseminate them can provide opportunities for many in-person interactions across a neighborhood. Think about the conversation someone might have with a librarian while dropping off fliers to leave on the bulletin board, or the chat between a volunteer handing a flyer to a resident at their doorstep.
Besides these two methods, most folks will share information with one another via text (or messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal), on phone calls and on social media. In that last category, Facebook neighborhood groups came up most frequently.
A few interviewees also said that some members of their community get information from local papers like La Raza or Austin Weekly News, local Spanish-language radio stations and city-wide TV news, particularly Spanish-language stations like Univision.
What are some examples of community-led projects that address information gaps?
Responses run the gamut from mutual aid groups to Whatsapp groups to community archive work. Though none of these projects look like conventional journalism, they all help to meet information needs at different levels. They all stem from people noticing a unique gap or opportunity in their community and working to fill it, often bringing others into the fold.
One common example is convening, sometimes to facilitate dialogue about a particular issue, sometimes in a more structured workshop setting, sometimes to share resources with one another.
In Back of the Yards there is a standing monthly Peace and Education Coalition meeting where representatives of different community-based organizations and nonprofits update one another on resources that might benefit residents. La Brocha, a workshop series organized by health professionals who saw the need for programming for Latinx seniors. At each convening, a teaching artist leads a painting class for Spanish-speaking elders and their caregivers, some who are cognitively healthy and others who have dementia. Part of the gathering is dedicated to sharing relevant information about cognitive disease, given the lack of Spanish-language information available on the topic.
We also learned of zines that document different neighborhood goings-on. One interviewee mentioned seeing zines around Cicero with details about a proposed local ordinance, and another mapping the locations of different vendors like tamaleros or eloteros in Little Village. There are also a few zines meant to more generally inform their readers, like one “seed guide” that circulated Cicero with instructions on when to sow different local plants.
What kinds of support do these projects need?
The projects mentioned during our research are often run by volunteers or as someone’s side gig rather than a full-time job. So one major need for support is capacity, including knowledge or skills or simply having an extra set of hands for discrete tasks like planning an event or distributing a stack of flyers.
A few interviewees said that mentorship could be valuable, not just to impart media-specific skills, but also to serve as a sounding board. Others said it would be helpful to have trainings centered both around journalism skills, like fact-checking, and general project management, like creating and managing a budget.
We also know that access to resources is important, be it a tool, like the Chicago COVID Resource Finder; equipment or materials, like a printer-copier, ink and paper; or a sharing of power, like using our position within the Chicago media and nonprofit landscape to amplify and advocate for work.
Finally, interviewees told us that funding would be a useful form of support. Extra dollars could go toward meeting some of the above needs while allowing organizers the flexibility to make their own budgets.
What’s next?
We are already beginning to make some changes to our programming based on this process. The Public Newsroom now explicitly focuses on showcasing people-powered efforts that meet information needs, both to elevate this work and hopefully inspire further iterations. We’re also asking attendees to share topics they’re interested in or projects they’re working on during the workshops as a way to connect people, encourage future potential collaborations and enable skills-sharing.
Moving forward we want to incorporate these insights across City Bureau teams. We have already drawn upon lessons from these conversations to shape our distribution of fliers promoting the Chicago COVID Resource Finder.
And looking ahead, we will be fine-tuning and standardizing these listening practices so we can continue to do this work on an ongoing basis. As we consult the insights above, it is key to remember that information ecosystems are not static, they are constantly changing. Our commitment is to keep listening, hopefully a little better each time.
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