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COJO for COVID recovery: Solutions-focused constructive journalism as a pandemic exit strategy for local/regional UK communities

Lead Research Organisation: Bournemouth University
Department Name: Faculty of Media and Communication

Abstract

This project uses COVID-19 as the research situation to investigate - through a UK-wide rollout - the potential power of the novel genre of solutions-focused constructive journalism (known as COJO) in helping local/regional communities to deal with unprecedented challenges. As the public emerges out of the lockdown to face a painful and uncertain struggle to exit from the pandemic, they will need to be informed, inspired and empowered to respond to social problems in a forward-looking manner. As a rigorous evidence-based reporting framework and toolkit that shifts the focus from what is the problem to what is the solution, COJO - also called solutions journalism (SOJO) - holds a strong potential to serve that acute cause. Gathering Bournemouth University, the Association of British Science Writers, the Solutions Journalism Network and Newsquest, this project investigates the extent to which and the way in which COJO can help the UK public to transition to the "new normal". It entails three major activities over 18 months:
(a) investigate what a pandemic-wounded public expects the media, especially local news, to do to help them out of the crisis in an informed, inspired and forward-looking manner;
(b) use the findings and insights from the first phase to develop and deliver a learning-by-doing campaign in which local news titles across the UK produce constructive journalism on COVID-19 solutions; and
(c) evaluate the overall values of constructive journalism for both the news industry and the public during the exit and their implications for news coverage of future epidemics/pandemics and crises.
 
Title News 
Description The training and mentoring within this grant resulted in nearly 170 solutions news stories for pandemic recovery across nearly 50 local news titles across the UK 
Type Of Art Creative Writing 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact Not known. Two of the stories brought one mentee to the Young Journalist Award in 2022. 
 
Description Of several branches of constructive journalism, solutions journalism (SOJO) has recently emerged as the most popular one, being increasingly practised in newsrooms around the world. Solutions-oriented journalism, contrary to problems-oriented mainstream journalism, aims at neutralizing the negativity bias in traditional news through rigorous, evidence-based and balanced news reporting that focuses on responses to social problems. There is an established body of evidence about the positive impact of solutions journalism on audience emotions (e.g. hope and optimism), engagement with the news, public knowledge and self-efficacy.

Our research with local news communities in the UK has so far sheds some more light on the potential of SOJO in the Covid-19 context. Drawing on the theory of psychological empowerment and through 59 in-depth interviews with members of the public in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that audiences consider SOJO to be useful in intrapersonal empowerment (i.e. increasing perceived control and self-efficacy), interactional empowerment (i.e. enhancing critical awareness), and behavioural empowerment (i.e. motivating community involvement and coping resilience). Such research supports the idea that further integration of SOJO into the newsroom may have both commercial and public service benefits, thus facilitating the "democratic promise" of journalism.

Yet such integration seems to be an uphill battle for the 50+ local newsrooms that participate in the Solutions Journalism for Pandemic Recovery campaign of this AHRC-funded project. The campaign provides on-the-job training and mentoring for local journalists to produce solutions journalism stories around how local people and organisations recover from the pandemic. Our observation of the process, plus interviews with participating reporters, editors and mentors so far, suggest a number of important challenges for this emergent form of journalism.

Interviews with journalists indicated that they saw the merits of solutions journalism and were keen to embed it in the newsroom, but there remain a number of impediments to such change. Many of these speak to the prevailing political economy of local news that individual journalists are quite powerless to challenge. For instance, many spoke of being crippled by the existing workloads which left little capacity for developing solutions-based stories. This also speaks to a perceived incompatibility between solutions journalism and everyday reporting.

Editors - under immense pressure for eyeballs, clicks and profits - played a pivotal role in the success (or not) of embedding solutions journalism in the newsroom. Those who supported their journalists to produce solutions journalism saw the most productive outcomes (number of stories, levels of audience engagement and so on). Where they didn't, journalists found themselves fighting against a machine that is programmed for speed and volume of outputs over depth and investigation. Few journalists produced any solutions journalism in these circumstances.
Exploitation Route This was an action research project in which the action (solution news campaign) was informed directly by the research. We attempted to set up a UK Constructive Journalism Network with the initial membership being the mentees and mentors of this project, plus interested editors. However, this didn't come fruitful as again, most of the participants were too busy with other things and some, because of that, lost their interest in further practising this new news approach.

We will, however, continue to bring the findings into newsroom practices in the future through teaching future journalists, training webinars and newsroom consultancy. We also plan to work with colleagues to connect solutions journalism with an emerging academic trend called solutions-oriented social sciences. An area where solutions journalism would prove useful is climate change communication, and we will attempt to further our research in this area.

The research findings have already fed into a submission to the current parliament enquiry on Sustainability of Local Journalism: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/6536/sustainability-of-local-journalism/. As of November 2023, we have published four journal articles out of the project, with another two in the pipeline. The research findings have been shared at 13 international conferences, raising awareness among scholars about the strengths, weaknesses and challenges to solutions journalism, especially in crisis contexts such as the pandemic. This includes one keynote speech as the Political Studies Association Annual conference in 2023.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections
URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2021.2023324?journalCode=rjos20
 
Description In total, we organised 15 workshops for approximately 160 participants, mostly from the UK media, on how to do solutions journalism in the local post-lockdown community context. The subsequent mentoring within this grant resulted in nearly 170 solutions news stories for pandemic recovery across nearly 50 local news titles across the UK. Two the stories brought one mentee, Elisabeth Mahase, to a Young Journalist Award in 2022. An Nguyen, the PI, was invited to deliver a keynote on solutions journalism at the major industry conference, NewsWired, in 2022 as well as featured as an expert in constructive journalism in a number of trade press articles. Nguyen, along with Co-I Jackson, submitted to the UK the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee's Sustainability of Local Journalism, in 2022. We were cited five times and were among the few individuals named in the body of the Committee's final report in 2023. Some of our recommendations based on the experience from our solutions journalism campaign (e.g. setting up and maintaining a permanent News Innovation Fund that takes into account the diversity of local news landscape) seem to be integrated into the committee's recommendations. In 2024, Jackson, Gluck and Nguyen published a paper on the COJO campaign of this project in Journalism Studies. This was very well received, being introduced in some prestigious research highlight services such as Nieman Report, translated into French, and read by many journalists around the world. Jackson was invited to deliver a talk on the study to a solutions journalism workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
First Year Of Impact 2021
Sector Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

Policy & public services
 
Description Parliament submission
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
Impact Our submission was cited five times in the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee's final report, Sustainability of Local Journalism, in January 2023. We were some of the few individuals named in the body of the report. Some of our recommendations based on the experience from our solutions journalism campaign (e.g. setting up and maintaining a permanent News Innovation Fund that takes into account the diversity of local news landscape) seem to be integrated into the committee's recommendations.
URL https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/33635/documents/183838/default/
 
Description DC Thomson 
Organisation DC Thomson
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We trained and mentored about reporters from 10 of DC Thomson's local news titles to produce solutions journalism output in response to the pandemic recovery.
Collaborator Contribution Staff time to participate in the training
Impact About 30 solutions news stories published during the training
Start Year 2021
 
Description Research-informed training workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We conducted in-depth interviews with 60 people and a national survey with 2015 UK adults to explore how they felt about pandemic news coverage, what they expected from the media in the pandemic recovery process, and how constructive solutions journalism might help them in that process. We then brought the key findings in our training seminars for the journalists who participated in the solutions news campaign of the project, as well as those who were interested in solutions journalism but not part of the project. In total, 15 workshops were held for approximately 160 participants, mostly from the UK media.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022