On July 21, Colorado Media Project staff and members of the Colorado media and other concerned local residents came together to brainstorm and develop "low-resolution prototypes," a first step toward building Colorado's media future.
Teams met together in the morning to generate ideas and establish the foundation for their innovative prototypes. Groups were split among four "How Might We?" questions:
- Give someone the news they need to feel smart and confident in their social circles (social capital).
- Help people get outside their bubbles by making someone they disagree with trustworthy?
- Make people identify and engage with state news as they do with national news?
- Make local news as attractive during leisure time as national news?
The "social capital" teams came up with a prototype of an email of aggregated headlines from various independent, digital media outlets, with brief descriptions of each story. The prototype allows CMP the ability to track use and user response for those who opt into the email list.
The "bubble" teams came up two distinct prototypes. The first, a chatting forum for discourse outside the usual political and ideological “bubbles. The chat site would allow users to invite two or more users to chat, and rate each other on the civility of their discourse. The second prototype, a media literacy scoring system, would motivate users to read stories they might otherwise avoid, through an aggregator of Colorado media developed by CMP.
The teams focused on making statewide news as inviting as national news discussed how to get readers to engage with with state and local news. One prototype, “Colorado In Your Pocket,” is an interactive news-aggregator that readers could search for answers to specific questions about state and local government. In response, they would receive curated videos that would answer their questions. Another prototype would feature an aggregator using geolocation to provide hyperlocal news stories, focused in terms or relevance, delivered to readers throughout the day.
The last team, tackling the "leisure time" question, proposed a platform that tagged articles with certain identities, locations and interests, allowing people who do not regularly consume large volumes of news to selectively filter stories to match their precise interests.
CMP would like to thank all of those who participated in the July 21st workshop and forum. We look forward to working together to strengthen the civic fabric of Colorado.