Meetr

2020 - Present

a number of illustrated people solo and in pairs across a purple background with stars

Meetr, an online evaluation tool to measure community engaged storytelling, fosters trust by involving communities in reporting. It offers a two-step process to measure the impact of community engagement through discussions and surveys. The reflection guide and survey is based on the Civic Media Practice report by Eric Gordon and Gabriel Mugar. It has been adapted specifically for journalists by Regina Lawrence and Andrew DeVigal, and refined by a cohort of engagement journalists assembled in 2018.

Visit website



About the Project

Problem Space

With our mediascape changing by the day, we need tools that help us adapt and put trust over transactions. Engagement journalism builds trust in communities by reporting with communities rather than "on" them. Meetr measures the value of community engagement during and after a project through two easy steps.

Proposed Intervention

Step one takes journalists through a series of discussion questions on how community engagement informs their practice while step two asks them to complete a survey based on the discussion questions. By periodically scoring their engagement throughout a project, teams and journalists can track the impact of their engagement as Meetr calculates and graphs the scores.

Social Impact

News organizations such as the Ohio County Monitor, Capital Public Radio, and Alaska Public Radio News have utilized Meetr to assess and evaluate their engagement techniques, which is foundational for institutional change. Additionally, meetr.city has been used by civic innovation projects in municipal governments and civil society organizations in Romania and the United States. 

Collaborator

Logo image for Agora Center at the University of Oregon

Project Contact

For inquiries about this project, please contact eric_gordon@emerson.edu.