The 2016 election, at least on the Republican side, has been defined in part by rejection of elite judgment and traditional party power-brokers. And it’s unfolded in a news environment dominated by an obsession with the horse-race minutiae necessary to fill a 24-hour broadcast day.

In an environment like this, what’s the role for PBS, a service with a reputation that’s rather less volatile than the times we’re living in? I spoke this week with Marie Nelson, PBS’ vice president for news and public affairs, to figure out how PBS plans to cover an election that has upended conventional wisdom in so many ways.

“I think that one of the things that you’ve seen is that it’s no longer good enough to tell people what has happened or even to unpack why certain things are happening,” she said. “Really, it’s more about connecting that information to the real experiences of your audience. They want to know context. They want to get a real appreciation for how the news matters to them. So making those linkages has become more important than ever.”

Nelson cautioned against seeing some of the more unusual elements of the current campaign as strictly new, pointing out that “there’s always been an element of surprise” in presidential campaigning, even if those surprises are now amplified by cable news and social media. One of PBS’ election-season efforts is “16 for ’16,” a series of 30-minute documentaries produced in collaboration with OZY Media that will focus on presidential campaigns past.

“If you look at the campaign of a Howard Dean or a Ross Perot, there are incredible connections to what you’re seeing in the races with Donald Trump and others,” Nelson said. “Going back and looking through and understanding the race of a Geraldine Ferraro or even a Sarah Palin draws interesting parallels to what you see now with Hillary Clinton. Even in the history space when it comes to politics, there’s still the desire to make sure this is not just a piece that’s really looking back, but that this is a piece that’s helping (clarify the current race).”

And at a moment when cable news networks have huge teams on the road tracking even fading candidates’ every moves, PBS is opting for a different approach to boots on the ground. One of the most significant efforts in this direction will be a new content-sharing partnership with NPR that will include an elections section on PBS’ website that promotes NPR content and the integration of PBS stories into NPR’s politics section.

Nelson said that while many people may assume that these two public broadcasters already work together, this is a new collaboration that will give PBS greater reach in covering the 2016 election: “You’ll have that digital video and audio come together in a way we’ve never been able to do as public broadcasters.”

The partnership with NPR will let PBS share the huge network of public radio reporters who will be covering the campaigns not as embedded reporters who are traveling with the candidates, but from the perspectives of local communities.

“I think that there are clear realities in terms of a news organization’s ability to finance their coverage,” Nelson said. “So there’s a lot of strategic thinking that’s gone into applying those resources where we think they’ll yield us the greatest results ... You will see a clear effort on our part to undertake things that are going to supply more context to audiences.”

PBS is also planning a series of nine short movies called “Postcards From the Great Divide,” which will premiere during PBS’ “NewsHour” and then be distributed online.

“The idea is to find filmmakers who are situated in politically important pockets around the country, but who are there to give you a grass-roots perspective through their filmmaking,” Nelson explained. “It’s not about the horse race. It’s about amplifying interesting conversations or phenomena.”

PBS is also hoping to use the election year to reach out to audiences who might not have seen themselves as natural parts of PBS’ demographic. The PBS series “Independent Lens” will air two documentaries, “Peace Officer,” about the sheriff who established Utah’s first SWAT team only to see his son killed by one, and “The Armor of Light,” which examines Rev. Rob Schenck’s growing conviction that his pro-life beliefs mandated him to advocate not only against abortion but also for more responsible use of guns.

Both documentaries will be followed by “America After” town hall meetings, moderated by “NewsHour” co-anchor Gwen Ifill, which PBS has also convened after national events such as the Ferguson, Missouri, protests and the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Those town halls may make for good television, but as PBS community engagement teams work to put together a strong group of participants for the conversations, they also give PBS an opportunity to reach out to people who may not be regular PBS viewers yet who are deeply connected to the issue at hand. In the case of the “Independent Lens” documentaries, that may include law enforcement officers and evangelical Christians.

PBS is also hoping to draw in Latino viewers with a documentary about voter registration activist Willie Velasquez and a special edition of Maria Hinojosa’s “America by the Numbers” series.

And, of course, getting the word out about all these new projects and reaching younger potential viewers will require savvy digital and social media strategies. Nelson was quick to tout the digital reach of the PBS partnership with NPR, and her own experience working on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” which was the first NPR show to have a digital producer, and to praise in-house efforts to build PBS’ digital brand, including the ability to show social media mentions live on-screen during the “America After” town halls.

But social media has occasionally been a tricky space for PBS’ stars in the past. Last year, when PBS ombudsman Michael Getler criticized Ifill for a tweet critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he wrote that “tweeting does not appear to be a tool ... that is appropriate for maintaining credibility, which is the bedrock for news organizations.”

Nelson disagrees.

“One of the things I must say is regardless of the comments that you referenced, our talent, and I’m immediately of course thinking of Gwen Ifill, have been some of the earliest adopters of social media and have really used that as a tool in terms of No. 1, communicating important things from their perspective as they report on their stories,” she told me. “But also I think there’s a real keen awareness that people wanted to have that sense of connection to the folks who are responsible for their journalism.”