The University of Akron has received a $174,990 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to lead the new Informed Citizen Akron project through the 2016 presidential campaign.

The statewide project is a collaborative effort between the university’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics , the Jefferson Center in Minnesota and a consortium of Ohio’s media organizations, which will be led by the Akron Beacon Journal. The goal of the project is to “help newsrooms better understand and respond to the preferences of Ohio voters,” according to a news release, through the use of polls and nonpartisan events. It will give Ohio voters the chance to voice concerns to candidates and look into the priorities of citizens. The project aims to address political disengagement from information overload by helping identify the topics of most interest to Ohioans. The Bliss Institute will conduct the polls, while the Jefferson Center will be in charge of the engagement events. The participating media outlets will then use that feedback to focus on the information that “resonates with voters and improves the public discourse around elections,” the release said. “Working with the Ohio news media, we hope to change the way the presidential campaign is covered in Ohio,” Bliss Institute director John Green said in the release. “The goal is coverage focused on issues rather than just on which candidate is ahead and which is behind.”