To Repair, or to Burn It Down?

Abstract

The concluding chapter summarizes the argument for a community-centered process model that uses communication infrastructure theory to assess local storytelling networks and design interventions that aim to strengthen them. It reviews key questions about how local journalism can share power with and offer more wholistic narratives of stigmatized communities—and how this will require journalists to challenge some norms and practices. The chapter maps out steps in a process, including assessing information needs, convening a participatory design process, and piloting, monitoring, and evaluating interventions. It reflects on how intervention may work to address barriers to trust including perceived negative/inaccurate coverage, polarization, and objectivity norms that create distance between journalists and communities. Finally, it reviews how outcomes of this process will vary depending on local place and power dynamics, and how these cases add to communication infrastructure theory by illustrating how trust operates in local storytelling networks.