Narrative Repair and Community Memory in Post-Truth Chicago Newsrooms

Thesis Abstract

This study examines how Chicago-based newsrooms facing post-truth pressures enact narrative repair to reconstruct communal memory, addressing the problem of fragmented public memory and erosion of trust in local journalism amid contested veracity. The aim is to elucidate mechanisms through which newsroom practices, editorial storytelling, and audience engagement contribute to sustained collective memory and restoration of credibility in a climate of misinformation. Specific objectives include (1) identifying narrative repair strategies employed by Chicago newspapers and broadcast outlets during 2018–2024, (2) assessing the role of community memory in shaping audience reception to corrective reporting, (3) evaluating the effectiveness of framings, sourcing practices, and transparency measures in mitigating perceived bias, and (4) proposing a theorized model linking newsroom interventions to memory consolidation and trust restoration. The study adopts a mixed-methods design grounded in the narrative repair framework (Klein, 2016) and memory studies theories, integrating Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to contextualize newsroom practices within organizational routines, and the Communicative Memory model to interpret audience interpretations. The population comprises ten Chicago-based newsrooms, including five legacy dailies and five digital-start outlets, from which a purposive sample of 40 journalists and editors (4 per newsroom) and 600 audience participants across diverse ethnolinguistic communities will be drawn. Data collection combines semi-structured interviews with journalists (n=40) and editorial staff (n=20), content analyses of 120 feature-length reports and 300 short-form updates on post-truth incidents, and focus groups with community members (n=6 groups, 8–12 participants each). Instruments include a coding scheme for narrative repair techniques (apology, corrections, transparency of sources, re-framing), a trust perception scale adapted from McAllister (1995) and Kim and Kim (2019), and a memory salience questionnaire. Validity is enhanced via triangulation, intercoder reliability checks (Cohen’s kappa ? 0.80), and pilot testing with two outlets. Data analysis proceeds in three strands. First, thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke (2006) will identify recurrent repair strategies and their contextual triggers, aided by NVivo 2.0 to categorize codified themes and narratives. Second, quantitative analyses will test relationships between repair strategies and trust outcomes using multiple regression, controlling for audience demographics and prior media trust levels; moderation analyses will examine the role of community memory salience. Third, a structural equation model will be estimated to assess the causal pathways among editorial transparency, narrative repair, perceived bias, and trust restoration, with model fit evaluated via RMSEA, CFI, and TLI. The study will also perform sentiment and frame analysis on a subset of 60 corrective pieces to determine the conduciveness of framing to memory coherence. Expected findings indicate that explicit corrections, transparent sourcing, and explicit acknowledgment of uncertainty correlate positively with trust restoration among previously skeptical audiences, while overreliance on institutional legitimacy without community-facing reparative actions may fail to sustain memory coherence. The research anticipates that community memory acts as a moderator, with higher salience audiences showing stronger alignment between repair narratives and remembered events, thereby facilitating durable memory consolidation. A typology of repair acts—epistemic clarification, empathetic acknowledgment, and structural transparency—will emerge, with differential effectiveness across legacy and digital-native outlets. The contribution to knowledge comprises (1) an empirically grounded model linking narrative repair to communal memory formation in urban news ecosystems, (2) evidence-based guidelines for newsroom practices that foster trust and memory coherence, and (3) methodological advances in integrating memory theory with contemporary journalism studies. The study concludes that narrative repair, when strategically combined with community-centered framing and verifiable sourcing, can rehabilitate public memory and restore trust in post-truth urban newsrooms. Practical recommendations include adopting standardized corrections pipelines, increasing audience co-creation of narratives, and implementing transparent sourcing dashboards to sustain memory alignment over time.