Community media and design: Insight Journalism as a method for innovation

Abstract

This article details the benefits and challenges of Insight Journalism, a community engagement and research methodology developed by the interdisciplinary Bespoke project. Based in two under-resourced urban neighbourhoods in North West England, Bespoke combined community media with participatory digital design by supporting local residents to create a series of 'old' and 'new' media outputs that were exhibited locally and used within an innovative design process. The digital designs inspired by the journalism were then built by the Bespoke team and deployed within the local area, where Insight Journalists evaluated their reception. Based on our experiences, in this article, we argue that Insight Journalism can provide a vital space for exploring salient civic and social issues, but must be understood as a process of building relationships and competencies, as well as a set of products including the mediated stories and digital designs that resulted from ongoing engagement. © 2013 Intellect Ltd Article.