Engaged Journalism, Democratic Engagement?: The Impact of Newsroom Listening Sessions on Political Participation

Abstract

This paper explores whether regional engaged journalism impacts democratic engagement in local government. Carolina Public Press, a non-profit newsroom in Western North Carolina, carried out a number of community listening sessions in 2014 and 2015. This paper uses a difference in difference model to see if these listening sessions resulted in changes to voting, political donations or testimony at county budget hearings in the counties where these listening sessions were held. Across several statistical models the presence of a listening session in a county does not appear to have any statistically significant impact on any of the markers of democratic engagement.