A common approach in scientific research and policy is a commitment to develop projects or legislation trying to improve problems experienced by low-income and rural communities; however, lack of interaction with community members during the process tends to produce unsatisfactory results. We visited disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley of California and interviewed local stakeholders (community members and leaders, policy advocates, attorneys, and educators). Then we analyzed a corpus related to disadvantaged communities from a pool of California-related publications containing 154,000 scientific papers, 2.6 million newspaper articles, and 11,000 state legislation bills from 2017 to 2020 to estimate the frequency and quality of disadvantaged community representation. Here we present our findings describing the biases and gaps of knowledge by scientific papers, California newspaper articles, and legislation bills with respect to disadvantaged communities in California, and we suggest opportunities for scientists, media communicators, and policymakers to amplify the voices of these stakeholders. In all corpus categories, disadvantaged communities are underrepresented: about one in four Californians live in disadvantaged communities, but only one in 2000 news articles and scientific papers cover them. The concerns and priorities of disadvantaged communities do not match the public perspective of them depicted by the corpus. Developing effective policies requires addressing place-specific nuances and co-occurrence of structural inequities in partnership with local stakeholders. Holistic coverage in newspapers and community-based approaches are necessary platforms to increase awareness and sensibility about disadvantaged communities, helping tailor policy solutions, and building the political leverage needed to implement them.

科学研究和政策上的一种通用方法是致力于开发项目或立法，以改善低收入和农村社区所遇到的问题；但是，在此过程中缺乏与社区成员的互动往往会产生令人不满意的结果。我们访问了加利福尼亚州圣华金山谷的处境不利社区，并采访了当地利益相关者（社区成员和领导人，政策倡导者，律师和教育工作者）。然后，我们从2017年至2020年从加利福尼亚州相关出版物库中分析了与弱势社区相关的语料库，其中包含154,000篇科学论文，260万份报纸文章和11,000个州立法法案，以估计弱势社区代表的频率和质量。在这里，我们介绍我们的发现，以科学论文，加利福尼亚报纸的文章以及针对加利福尼亚处境不利社区的立法法案来描述知识的偏见和差距，并且我们为科学家，媒体传播者和政策制定者提供机会，以扩大这些利益相关者的声音。在所有语料库类别中，处于不利地位的社区所占的比例均不足：大约四分之一的加利福尼亚人生活在处于不利地位的社区中，但是在2000年的新闻报道和科学论文中只有一处涵盖了这些社区。弱势社区的关注和优先事项与语料库所描述的公众观点不符。制定有效的政策需要与地方利益相关者合作解决特定地点的细微差别和结构性不平等现象的同时发生。