Media can play a critical role in climate action, helping underserved communities tell their environmental stories. This project helped measure the impacts of media on stewardship behavior. Photo credit: Wirestock.
Project Dates: Spring 2023–Spring 2024
Client: Detroit Public Television (DPTV)
SEAS Faculty Advisor: Mike Shriberg, SEAS Professor of Practice & Engagement; Associate Director, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR); Director of Engagement, Michigan Sea Grant
SEAS Students: Hira Ahmad, Jared Holter, Abby McDowell, Hannah Rieders, Madeline Rieders
About the Client
Great Lakes Now (GLN) is a regional multimedia news initiative housed at Detroit Public Television (DPTV), Detroit’s local PBS station. As a public media organization, DPTV provides the long-term, community-based coverage that commercial media cannot, helping underserved communities tell their stories. GLN covers national and international stories about the recreational, economic, scientific, political, and environmental issues related to the Great Lakes and drinking water. GLN has reported on issues like the impact of PFAS pollution and other legacy contaminants on public health; water shutoffs in frontline communities; solutions for aging regional water infrastructure; and the prevention of harmful algal blooms and proliferation of aquatic invasive species.
About the Project
This project’s goal was to develop an equity-driven model for environmental journalism in Detroit, in partnership with GLN. The aim was for local media to work alongside affected communities, to better reflect and uplift the voices of residents in Detroit — with particular emphasis on issues surrounding drinking water quality and affordability. The project team also sought to examine best practices for measuring the tangible impact of media and evaluating the results that media coverage can achieve for communities. The Clinic provided summer funding for the team to conduct an extensive literature review and interviews with key stakeholders; the project went on to become a formal SEAS master's project.
DPTV’s drinking water initiative aimed to create a new model of media that is more closely linked with the neighborhoods it serves, while forming connections between communities with shared concerns across the region. This project was designed to distill that knowledge and create practical tools (including an advisory body) to implement and measure impact. The project team assisted DPTV in better defining and describing how public media may lead to improved environmental stewardship, at either the individual or institutional level.
Read the report here.