Through Our Eyes: Visualising the Stories We Think Journalists Are Missing or Aren’t Covering Well

Societies around the world have seen a decrease over the past decade in news engagement as audiences increasingly report feeling “fatigued” or overwhelmed by the news, feeling that news is untrustworthy or poorly represents “people like me”; and/or feeling that the news isn’t relevant or valuable. Amidst this decline, movements and models, including civic journalism, community-centred journalism, and solidarity journalism, have emerged to try to counter this trend. This study uses one of these models—engaged journalism—as informed by care theory and a participatory and creative visual research methodology, photovoice, to identify stories that local, non-urban audiences living in Australia think are going untold or are being poorly told. In doing so, this project identifies three aspects that journalists should consider in their professional practices: who or what is rendered [in]visible in journalistic coverage and how are they shown; to what extent are journalists helping with a community’s problems; and to what extent are journalists helping steer community conversations around ongoing issues. It also identifies 18 barriers that community members think are negatively impacting journalists’ practices and roles, and reflects on how well these barriers can be addressed through existing care theory principles that other research has identified.