I finally got the chance to attend the TICTeC conference hosted by mySociety, and this year’s theme was about “Pro-Democracy Technology,” as a more directed framing than the more general term of “civic tech.” It was great to attend as part of the Open Parliament TV team and be back in a space focused on the public service aspect of technology, and, as one might expect that meant there was also a lot of overlap with journalism.
Several sessions referenced three key ways that civic tech interacts with journalism: usage, visibility, and learning.
Usage: getting tools and data into the hands of journalists
A familiar refrain came up in many presentations: technologists built these tools to make the work of people who care about civic discourse and democracy easier! Journalists are a major subset of that community. Giulio Carvalho presented about Diários do Clima, a project from Open Knowledge Foundation in Brazil to make climate data more open and accessible. He advised that a “build it and they will come” approach will not work to engage journalists, you have to work with them directly. This is a point that cannot be repeated frequently enough!
He described how they held small group workshops, as opposed to recorded webinars or other passive tools, to get hands-on with journalists and the data. They also offered small grants to help with the reporting. This wraparound approach was successful and led to several stories. He also suggested ideas like convening an editorial advisory group to talk about ideas across organizations, which I love as a way to get people really working together and to break down divides between news organizations and technologists or civil society organizations.
Visibility: news coverage to increase awareness
Ultimately, the openness of many civic tech projects is about helping more people understand what is going on around them, whether that be in politics, policymaking, or their environment. Journalism still has reach to help get this information out beyond a project’s own platforms. Gitungo Wamere from Mzalendo shared how their promise tracker tool helped inform news coverage of promises made by politicians in Kenya and influenced the mainstream national dialogue about how or whether politicians were upholding their campaign pledges.
This comparative approach raised questions about what happens after the data collected by many tools. For example, a project that tracks bills, how does the policy described in the bill get implemented? Does it have the intended impact? This also seems like a ripe area for journalism to build on the work of these projects, situating policies with ongoing reporting on the broader context of a single bill or issue. I can also see how this is an area for long-term collaboration between journalists, civic tech, and other civil society organizations (and potentially a strong fundraising pitch)—working together with each group playing their unique role but being much more effective in making impact by collaborating directly rather than just hoping a news investigation influences further data work or long-term changemaking.
Learning: journalism’s role in deciding who we learn from
News organizations still have tremendous power to shape what ideas are seen as valid. (A power that is being dramatically misused against trans people in both the US and the UK, but that’s a rant for another day.) But, through engagement we have the chance to learn from each other and broaden what views are seen as worthy, authoritative, meaningful, or persuasive. Fernanda Campagnucci spoke about her research on civic participation and technology, including referencing the classic concept of the ladder of engagement from Sherry Arnstein. While the ladder references citizen engagement in civic processes, the concept of deepening engagement with audiences comes up in journalism as well.
In addition to the role journalists play in deciding who the engage or address in their work, audiences are also exerting power by withholding their attention to news. Billion Lee from Cofacts in Taiwan pointed out how she’s seen people engage less with journalism directly, and so journalism needs outside support to build tech tools that engage audiences in other ways. A presentation later in the day mentioned a new crowdsourcing platform for annotating public documents, which reminded me of journalism tech projects from the past that made it easy to get help from audiences in that way. I think the learning and support can go both ways, between journalism, tech, and beyond.
I appreciated these perspectives across academia, tech, civil society, and more as they demonstrated the importance of learning across disciplines and being able to apply lessons to new settings. Billion was part of a session about designing engaging sessions for people to participate in civic tech, and demonstrated strategies on interactive workshops while underlining the importance of the basics, like good food and good company! It was a fitting way to wrapup an event that itself demonstrated the importance of connection and learning (across all continents!) to understand who is building what, what we can learn from each other, and ultimately how to better inform and equip our neighbors, whether that be through journalism or another method.
- Header image description: a view through a giant window toward the canal in Mechelen across a table with Post Its
Last modified on June 20, 2025
