Bringing up 'Engage': A one of its kind Digital Publication & Product

IPSM Foundation awarded a grant to the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) in 2017 to launch a digital initiative. This funding was to enable EPW to build and develop a strong and distinct identity in the digital sphere. To this end, the digital initiative supports two main functions for the journal: 1) Management of the website (upgrading user interface and experiences, content management etc), and building digital presence across platforms (social media) 2) Develop and produce distinct digital-only editorial content. 

Engage was launched in 2017 as a microsite (www.epw.in/engage) which hosts several newly launched content categories. Over the last few years, through EPW’s digital initiative, we have successfully expanded the boundaries of insightful journalism. This was achieved by exploring new formats of research and adopting distinct styles of presenting information to facilitate research interest among the readers and audience and ensuring the latter’s continuous engagement with EPW.

We developed EPW Engage to bridge the gap between complex academic research that is published in EPW pages and the everyday discursive reception of information at the level of both specialists and non-specialists. Starting with the text-first format of the print magazine, we gradually also pivoted to address the growing audio and video content space. In early 2020, we launched the inaugural season of our podcast series, Research Radio, which engaged in a behind-the-scenes research conversation with scholars and activists. Through this and our foray into the video space with Extracts by EPW, we sought to improve accessibility to sound research and to create new ways for people to learn, understand, and interact with scholarly content. 

EPW’s core commitment has always been about promoting long-term research-based analysis and commentary. There are many emerging news platforms which are focussing on news analysis and opinion, however, they do not pay enough attention to emerging social science research. The news cycle influences the Economic and Political Weekly’s editorial vision, however, its roots are firm in producing quality research week after week. Promoting and furthering EPW’s interests has been on Engage’s agenda since its inception in August 2017.

Our digital efforts stem from that core commitment and take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities presented by the digital medium to reimagine research. Engage rethinks research in the digital space, looking at wider access, and also a methodological shift in visualising and reformulating concepts, ideas, and research.

Infographics, Visual Essays, and Narratives: “Distillation” of special articles/in-depth commentaries into easy-to-understand, visually reimagined, digital formats. These could be charts, infographics, interactives, narrative flow charts, etc that provide a window into an article or an area of research. A sub-part of this is our focus on creating “social media shareables” -- Statistically Speaking: Data stories based on articles from the EPW archives which make a specific point and are produced in a “did you know” story format.

Reading Lists and Threads: Curated content produced using EPW archives functions as a quick digest to contextualise current news cycles and gain a more nuanced understanding of “trending” topics.

Discussion Maps/Dialogues: A collection of important debates that occurred in the pages of EPW curated in an interesting visual format that summarises and foregrounds key arguments. 

Debate/Resource Kits: Comprehensive kits on a specific topic incorporating text, infographics, and audio-visual content. These are made on evergreen topics and include at least 50 articles from EPW archives.

Audio/Visual Productions: Audio (podcasts)  and video programmes (visuals with text, webinars) to further debate and discussion on pertinent topics. 

Original Web Content and Special Series: Original, unpublished contributions on a variety of subjects (social sciences, liberal arts, news analysis, social media analysis, popular culture, contemporary art, and literature, reports from the field, among others). We expanded this over the last few years to include specially curated series on important broad subjects.

Our design and the continuous revaluation of this project was based on these broad frameworks: 

What were we trying to change? What kinds of values did we want to promote?

We wanted to encourage the idea of “going back to basics,” and promoting a spirit of inquiry. The current space is saturated with quick opinions and hot takes. We pushed the idea of a more in-depth, and 360-degree view of a topic or a subject. We explored new forms and formats of storytelling while staying true to these values. 

How did we create a mandate for what we want to achieve?

Building and improving upon EPW Digital’s identity as a pioneer in organizing and reimagining complex academic ideas into visual and easily accessible content was one of our top goals. Along with this we uplifted the quality of knowledge and debate in the digital space, strengthened the news media industry with research. Expanded current scope with new forms and formats of communicating research. 

What was our strategy?  

At the EPW, our impact could not be measured in numbers and traffic alone. Quality was our main asset. For us, our impact lay in providing quality content in the most easily understandable way and our outcome measures also included the longevity of our products. What we produced was evergreen and it continues to stay relevant and has become a critical knowledge resource for years to come. Some of our focus was on creating attitudinal change, where we wanted users to transition from traditional habits of news reading or change the perception of academic content. It was not a smooth process and required unlearning on part of the reader, which is an impact that is difficult to measure.  Another challenge was about value creation, especially when there was a continuous lack of linear causality between activities and impact (if measured qualitatively through web traffic or social shares).

Engage was a successful and unique content initiative that was forward-looking and gracefully carried the legacy of EPW as a publication.