New America Foundation, media policy initiative. With Funding provided by

New America Foundation

Understanding Media Diversity Using Media Ecosystem Analysis A review of the field and recommendations for a way forward Philip M. Napoli, Sarah Stonbely, Lew Friedland, Tom Glaisyer, And Joshua Breitbart

May 2012

Summary It is perhaps the defining paradox of the digital age: as information technologies continue to increase opportunities for individual citizens to produce, distribute, and receive information, the extent to which American communities are adequately receiving the information needed to support a well-functioning democracy is increasingly being called into question. This is especially true at the county and state levels. The question of whether there is adequate and diverse news and information to sustain local democratic processes is not new, the focus on local media-scapes is increasingly urgent.

In the 1970s and '80s, during the earlier age of one-way high fixed cost media the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) default was to support demographic diversity in licensed outlets. In the late 1970s, under the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) regulations, the FCC sought to encourage women and minority hires at broadcast outlets. When in the mid-1980s these policies came under fire, the FCC defended the EEO as being about producing more diverse content rather than being about affirmative action. In a series of court cases in the 1990s, the FCC was forced to admit that it had not effectively demonstrated that the employment of minorities and women in all facets of media ownership and production directly contributed to more diverse content. The FCC then backed away from strict demographic diversity assessment (Napoli 1999: 14-17). However, as Napoli (1999: 17) notes, the courts did not rule against the FCC because of evidence showing that demographic diversity does not affect content diversity, but rather for lack of empirical evidence of a positive relationship.

The fact that formal demographic diversity assessment had been part of the FCC's criteria for assessing broadcast licensees for as long as long as it was, and then was called back in the face of court challenges, reaffirms that the political context has a considerable influence on the FCC's policymaking. In the contemporary political environment, laissez-faire economics and small-government philosophies have great strength and are wielded often in opposition to government regulations. The challenges of measuring diversity should not be underestimated.

In addition to the politics of measurement, there are many challenges inherent in trying to understand local media ecosystems in rapid transition. Moreover, as a result, the dynamics of how our media system serves and affects local communities and their democratic process are also in a state of flux. Unlike the

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1990s, there is no lack of empirical research, though most is limited in scope, and uncoordinated. Much is narrowly focused on econometric analysis. We need to allow for the analysis of trends over time, as well as a complete understanding of the findings, strengths, and weaknesses of the broadest set approaches to date. This could involve one meta-study project and the integration of the large community that can aid in growing the base of knowledge. However, such efforts will be complicated by evolving technologies that likely render obsolete much of the empirical research undertaken in the 1990s.

As the transition to a digital media-scape coalesces and journalism emerges through new business models, we expect that the media ecosystem approach discussed in this paper will become increasingly valuable in assessing a locality's information landscape and providing the knowledge needed to make policy and that aids the distribution of diverse voices. The media ecosystem approach is highly complementary to the economic analyses that are primarily utilized in FCC decision making in this area. Such an approach should be executed with an eye to how both qualitative and quantitative analysis can be most valuable to federal policymakers, and, ultimately, to citizens and elected officials within their local communities. Specifically we recommend the undertaking of studies in the future that address concurrently:

Content: How much is produced? Who produces what? What are the levels of internal and external pluralism in the ecosystem as a whole?

Information Networks: How does news and information flow? Are individuals or community groups or new outlets producing original content, or is legacy content simply bouncing between a greater number of outlets? Who is consuming and what type of information are they paying attention to?

Information and News Institutions: What institutions are involved? No longer is publishing the province of only the radio, television, and newspaper. Libraries, journalism schools, low power radio, public access, and, increasingly, social media and government are playing a more important role. What role are social media playing?

Access: Who has access to information? Who can contribute information? What barriers, such as access to broadband exist? Access at what speed? Understanding how access varies across rural and urban geography, across age groups, across socio-economic strata, across ethnic and minority groups and the poor is particularly important.

Engagement: Who has the ability to engage with the information? Availability of information and technology does not ensure the media fluency necessary in a two-way, participatory media ecosystem. Those who participate should also have the ability to assess the health of their own ecosystem.

Furthermore, we recommend that media ecosystem studies are executed at the local level, encompass micro, meso and institutional (macro) forms of communication, and address the primary contexts in which citizens receive information on politics, day to day events, community issues, and natural disasters. Such studies will permit experts to evaluate media regulation to ensure, per Justice Black, that it safeguards “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources.” We also see studies that take this holistic view as a means to mobilize citizens, advocacy groups, industry organizations, NGOs, and policymakers to take action to improve these ecosystems and, ultimately, to enhance the democratic impact of mediated communication.

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Introduction

In an opinion filed July 7, 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals sided against the FCC's rule allowing newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership, while upholding the FCC's rules restricting local broadcast ownership consolidation. The decision was based in part on a lack of sufficient evidence. As the opinion stated:

It was not clear from the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which characteristics [of markets] the Commission was considering or why. The phrase 'characteristics of markets' was too open-ended to allow for meaningful comment on the Commission's approach. ... For example, key aspects of the rule rely on: the amount of 'local news' produced by an individual station involved in a potential merger and how that term is defined; the definition of 'major media voices,' including what counts as a major newspaper ... and whether a case-by-case approach or a categorical approach to propsoed mergers would better serve the public interest (pp. 26).

This critique has roots in the early 1990s when the courts started demanding stronger empirical evidence to support the FCC’s rules regarding media ownership and diversity.1 As a result, the FCC underwent a “shift in emphasis” (Napoli 1999: 8), and began to rely heavily on economic methods. Since then, the FCC has commissioned a steady stream of such studies addressing questions such as the influence of cross-ownership on viewpoint diversity. Despite this “empirical turn” for communication policy, there remains little consensus on fundamental questions relating to issues around diversity (Ho and Quinn 2009: 789-798), particularly given that the FCC’s research agenda that accompanies each quadrennial media ownership proceeding seems to start afresh, rather than meaningfully build upon or replicate studies conducted for previous ownership proceedings.

Moreover, the fact that formal demographic diversity assessment had been part of the FCC's criteria for assessing broadcast licensees for as long as long as it was, and then was called back in the face of court challenges, reaffirms that the political context has a considerable influence on the FCC's policymaking. In the contemporary political environment, laissez-faire economics and small-government philosophies have great strength and are wielded often in opposition to government regulations. The challenges of measuring diversity should not be underestimated.

Partly as a response to the limitations of economic analysis to provide conclusive answers to the full range questions of concern relevant to policymakers’ assessment of the structure and behavior of media markets, we propose the more holistic media ecosystem approach. This is not to say that economic analyses are not valuable, but rather to advocate for a wider lens in looking at the various factors that influence diversity. As part of an effort to re-orient diversity policy away from focusing solely on ownership, the media ecosystem approach is meant to be a more comprehensive look at the entire environment in which news is both produced and consumed, and how information flows within it.

While some of the studies comissioned by the FCC for the 2010 Quadrennial Review address parts of this critique (e.g. Hindman 2011), we argue that the FCC is inherently limited in its ability to make the kinds of considerations the Court is demanding because of its strong reliance on economic analysis – an analytical approach that the Commission has favored for the last 20 years (Blevins and Martinez 2010; Ho and Quinn 2008; Napoli 1999).

1 Note: We should also clarify that there are certain types of diversity – ownership – about which the FCC regulates directly, and other types – viewpoint, demographic – about which it does not. This means that in some studies, diversity variables will be both the independent variable (IV) and the dependent variable (DV) e.g. a study will ask how diversity (or consolidated ownership) affects viewpoint diversity, or whether a publically owned outlet has greater demographic diversity in its staff.

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Economic analyses are insufficient because of the complexity, contingency, and locally oriented nature of the 21st century media-scape – in which questions of supply, demand, efficiency, and competition do not adequately capture the increasingly diverse contexts in which news and information are produced, distributed, and consumed – and in particular how these dynamics affect the functioning of local communities.

In addition, given the long-standing centrality of the concept of diversity to assessments of the quality and vibrancy of U.S. media, any such assessment needs to pay close attention to defining the term “diversity.” One conception – source diversity – is based on Justice Black’s foundational proclamation: “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” However, diversity in terms of the sources of information is only one aspect; diversity in terms of media ownership, demography, viewpoint, format, and exposure must also be considered (e.g. Napoli 1999).

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy (2009) recognized the utility of the media ecosystem approach, while also reflecting its relatively embryonic stage:

Communities lack good tools to assess the quality of local information ecologies. There are no widely accepted indices for comparing different communities’ ecologies or determining whether information flow within a particular community is improving or degrading.(p. 39)

Formulating a reliable analytical framework from which policymakers, citizens, and community leaders can make comparisons, draw firm conclusions and formulate effective strategies requires a dramatic infusion of factual information and robust, objective analysis of the state of local media ecosystems.

Moreover, it is important that the development of such analytical tools does not take place in a vacuum. There have been, over the years, a variety of efforts, initiated by a variety of stakeholders (government agencies, academics, activists, NGOs, etc.) to assess one or more dimensions of local media ecosystems. Therefore any effort to develop an objective, comprehensive tool for assessing local media ecosystems should consider all previous efforts and, ideally, connect the results with other essential indicators of community and civic well-being. In this way, it will be possible to take citizens, policymakers, activists, and industries from measurement to action. Toward these ends, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the state of media ecosystem research, and recommendations for future work in this area.

In Section 1 we define “media ecosystem.” In section 2 we review the FCC’s historical approaches to understanding media diversity (the closest analogue to government-sponsored media ecosystem research to date). In Section 3 we discuss the basic parameters of research design and give examples of how they have been operationalized in existing media-ecosystem analyses. In Section 4 we look at data maps and ecosystem studies not focused on media, to give a sense of the growing acceptance of the approach, while Section 5 identifies similar efforts from outside of the U.S. In Section 6 we discuss conclusions and a possible path forward.

The appendix includes a table classifying various media ecosystem studies by the variables discussed in Section 3. It also details existing data sources that may be used for future work.

Section 1: What is a media ecosystem?

Assessing the efficacy of media was much easier in a world where economic and technological barriers dictated the one-way flow of information produced by only a few. With the advent of cable, satellite, and the Internet, the media-scape at all levels – local, regional, national, and international – has expanded and fragmented, producing a situation

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in which information is at once more diverse and interactive, but also uneven in quality and accessibility. Taking this new reality into account is the goal of the media ecosystem approach.

For our purposes, a media ecosystem is local in its level of analysis, encompasses institutional (typically newspapers, radio, and television), meso (communication across interconnected peer-to-peer networks, across neighborhoods, and broader community segments), and micro forms (e.g. social media, interpersonal networks) of communication,

and is the primary context in which citizens are affected by politics, day to day events, community issues and events such as natural disasters. Further, a media ecosystem is able to be defined by clear independent and dependent variables, allowing us to answer questions such as how the availability and quality of local news correlates with levels of knowledge about local politics, civic engagement, home-ownership or feelings of belonging. Crucially, a media ecosystem, when defined by clear independent variables, may be compared with other media ecosystems, such that the relative importance of the independent variables to the desired outcomes may be assessed. This conception, we believe, will come closest to reflecting the reality on the ground.

With these parameters in mind, we will first outline the FCC’s historical approaches to understanding media diversity (the closest analogue to government-sponsored media ecosystem research to date).

Section 2: The FCC’s Diversity Index

Napoli (1999) points to the late 1990s, as the time when the FCC, under Chairman Kennard, began to try to empirically study diversity in a rigorous and systematic manner. Its precursor, according to Napoli, was a “shift in emphasis,” to an approach that envisions diversity as “a tangible and empirically assessable construct rather than a justification for policy initiatives” (p. 8). Ho and Quinn (2009) conducted a wide-ranging review of the academic research attempting to measure media viewpoints. They likewise identify the 1990s as the moment when the courts began to demand empirical evidence for the effects of media consolidation on viewpoint. Since then, myriad attempts have been made – and, they argue, largely failed – to define and operationalize “viewpoint” and “diversity.” ”The inconclusiveness of extant work,” Ho and Quinn write, “is understandable: policy-relevant quantities are difficult to derive in this context with limited variation in policies of interest, even more limited data, and, to date, no reliable methods of measuring viewpoint diversity” (p. 798).

In 2002 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced its controversial Diversity Index (DI), in connection with its review of its media ownership regulations. The Commission created the Diversity Index to serve as a guide to assessing the status of local media markets and the appropriateness of permitting further ownership consolidation within these markets. The DI was based on the well-known Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), which measures market concentration by summing the squared market shares of each firm in a market. The Diversity Index extended and modified the HHI in a number of ways. The FCC described the methodology as follows:

In terms of calculating the Index, within each medium we combine commonly-owned outlets and calculate each owner’s share of the total availability of that medium. We then multiply that share by the share of the medium in question in the total media universe (television plus newspaper plus radio plus Internet). Once these shares in the overall “diversity market” have been calculated, we add together the shares of properties that are commonly-owned (e.g., a newspaper and a television station), square the resultant shares, and sum them to get the base Diversity Index for the market in question.\See Federal Communications Commission,

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2002 Biennial Regulatory Review, Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 18 FCC Rcd. 13629 (2003).

This description merits some clarification. First, as is indicated above, an owner’s holdings in each medium (television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet) are first computed separately, with an owner’s “share” of a particular medium calculated in terms of the proportion of the available outlets that the owner controls (thus, for instance, a firm owning two of the six television stations in the market would have a 33.3% share). Then, the owner’s share for each medium is weighted separately, with the weights being derived from a consumer survey in which respondents were asked to identify their primary sources of local and national news, and to assess the importance of different media as news sources. Specifically, the weights were derived from a survey question in which respondents were asked which types of media they had utilized for obtaining news and current affairs within the past 7 days. Thus, for instance, 57.8% of respondents claimed to have utilized television to obtain news and current affairs within the past 7 days. Based on these responses, the weighting scheme employed for the media included in the Diversity Index was as follows: television—57.8%; newspapers—25.8%; radio—0.3%; Internet—6.1%.

The weighting process would then be employed, with, for example, the 33.3% share of the broadcast television market described above multiplied by 57.8 (the weighting score for television)— and so on for each medium—to determine that firm’s share of the “diversity market.” Once this process had been completed for all of the holdings of each firm in the market, each firm’s total share was squared, then summed (following the HHI methodology) to produce the Diversity Index for that market. Based in part on the conclusions derived from employing this index in the analysis of a sample of media markets, the Commission concluded that the bulk of its ownership regulations could be substantially relaxed.

The direct relevance of the Commission's Diversity Index to broader efforts to understand local media ecosystems arises primarily from the introduction of the notion of assessing the “diversity importance” of different information sources (FCC 2003, p. 13777). As Napoli and Gillis (2006: 676) noted at the time:

The long-term importance of the Commission’s Diversity Index ultimately may not be in its continued application to policy questions . . . but in the extent to which the introduction of the index into the official media policy dialogue essentially has opened the door to a wider array of areas of inquiry than was the case in the past.

As it turned out, the Commission did end up abandoning the Diversity Index amidst the waves of criticism that it received. However, the now defunct Diversity Index has indeed "helped to legitimize certain areas of inquiry . . . as both the FCC and the courts have now acknowledged these areas of inquiry as directly relevant" to media policymaking (ibid.: 677.). Specifically, the FCC's Diversity Index methodology institutionalized the following points of focus that all bear directly on any more wide ranging effort to systematically assess local media ecosystems:

1) The extent to which a media outlet serves as a meaningful source of local news or public affairs content

In calculating its Diversity Index, the Commission explicitly excluded media platforms that it had previously deemed to be insignificant sources of local news and public affairs information. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit went so far as to challenge the Commission's inclusion of the Internet in the Diversity Index, on the basis that "The Commission does not provide, nor does the record contain, persuasive evidence that there is a significant presence of independent local news sites on the Internet" (Prometheus Radio Project v. Federal Communications Commission, 2004: 406). While the local news situation may certainly be very different today, the key point here is

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that the extent to which media outlets serve as a meaningful source of original local news or public affairs information to the citizens it serves has, since the advent of the Diversity Index, essentially been instiutionalized as an important point of focus for media policymakers (see, e.g., Knight Commission, 2009) and researchers (see, e.g. How News Happens, Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010).

2) The dynamics of how and why media consumers use different media sources

In outlining the objectives of its Diversity Index, the Commission took the -- to that point -- virtually unprecedented step of acknowledging the importance to their policies of understanding how citizens use media. As the Commission stated:

First, we premise our analysis on people’s actual usage patterns across media today. Nonetheless, our method for measuring viewpoint diversity weights outlets based on the way people actually use them rather than what is actually available as a local news source. (FCC 2003, p. 13787.)

While the Commission's efforts to accurately account for the complex dynamics of how and why citizens use different media sources came under intense criticism, the key point is that, once again, in the wake of the Diversity Index, this issue has now been effectively embedded into media policymaking and policy analysis. Moving forward, any effort to understand contemporary media ecosystems must be grounded in the dynamics of citizens' media usage in order to meet the needs of policymakers and policy advocates. This is especially important given the extent to which technological changes are dramatically changing the dynamics of citizens’ media usage.

Though not associated with the FCC’s Diversity Index academic researchers have provided some insight into how and why consumers use different media sources in the context of the media ecosystem. George and Waldfogel (2003) studied the effect on newspaper content of differing racial group preferences. They looked at large commercial newspapers, which have high fixed costs and rely on advertising for funding (two crucial caveats, as we will discuss shortly). They find that when the number of minorities in a community increases, minorities become more likely to buy the newspaper, with the implication that the content has moved closer to their preferences. By contrast, an increase in the white population makes minorities less likely to read, but does not affect white newspaper reading.

George and Waldfogel's (2003) research is telling not only in an environment where outlets are constrained by high fixed costs and a reliance on advertising. As they state, “When there are no fixed costs, suppliers can offer a continuum of products so that each consumer is targeted by some product(s). When fixed costs are high, by contrast, the market selects only a subset of the conceivable alternatives for production” (p. 767). This reflects what we know from the introduction of the Internet which involved relatively low barriers to entry and resulted in a greater degree of diversity in terms of sources and content. In this environment, every niche audience is more likely to be served, resulting in a more diverse news environment.

The take-away for media ecosystem research is that the research design should account not only for the different functions that different media platforms and outlets serve for citizens, but also for the fact that in the digital media environment, content is likely to reflect the degree of demographic diversity (including not only race, but also education, income, etc.) of specific localities.

3) Levels of audience exposure to -- and the influence of -- different information sources

In calculating its Diversity Index, the Commission chose to weight individual media outlets according to their potential audience reach, though the Commission acknowledged that it strongly considered weighting outlets

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according to their actual audience reach. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit took issue with the Commission's decision, stating that:

The Commission’s attempt to justify its failure to consider actual market share of outlets within a media type is not persuasive. It suggests that actual-use data is not relevant because ‘current behavior is not necessarily an accurate predictor of future behavior.’ But this truism did not prevent the Commission from preferring actual-use data in assigning relative weight to the different media types. (Prometheus Radio Project vs, FCC, 373 F.3d 372 (2004).)

The point that emerges from this conflict, and the point that has since resonated amongst virtually all efforts to understand contemporary media ecosystems, is that any meaningful assessment method must not only effectively inventory all of the information sources that are available to a particular community, but then also go further and assess the extent to which citizens actually use them.

The expressed logic of the Commission's Diversity Index even went one step further, with the Commission stating that the Index was intended to capture the “differential impact on the user of television, radio, newspapers, etc. We believe that the overall impact of a medium is substantially determined by the physical attributes of its distribution technology, along with user preferences” (FCC 2003, p. 13787). Thus, the extent to which a media outlet matters in the public sphere was introduced in the Diversity Index as a relevant policy concern. It has remained one to this day as researchers, policymakers, and advocates all attempt to make sense of the changing dynamics of contemporary media ecosystems.

Section 3: Key variables and the “media ecosystem” approach

As we will show, there have been many approaches taken in media ecosystem studies. We will discuss relevant previous research through the lens of the basic elements of the research design listed below:

Level of Analysis o Geographic: micro-local, local, regional, national, international o Type of communication: interpersonal (micro), peer-to-peer (meso), broadcasting (macro)

Unit of Analysis

Independent/intervening/dependent variables

Evidence

Type(s) of diversity studied o Demographic, ownership, viewpoint

Strengths

Weaknesses

Applicability to policy/regulatory rule-making

Level of Analysis

There are vectors of analysis in media ecosystem studies: geographic and type of communication. The geographic level of analysis ranges from the local level (neighborhood, city) to regional, national, and, in some cases, international. In terms of the level of communication: Interpersonal communication and social media represent the micro level; communication across interconnected peer-to-peer networks, neighborhoods, and broader community segments (e.g. “West Seattle”), falls on the “meso” level; and institution-based communication represents the macro.

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Friedland (2001) maps this range of communication in urban regions. Mapping projects may look, for example, at the output of public-information-oriented institutions (news outlets, but also universities and libraries, in some cases) within one city (local), or at the network of citizen-level information producers (e.g. blogs and interpersonal communication) within a neighborhood (micro-local). A project called “Slices of Boulder,” for example, maps Boulder, Colorado’s media ecosystem by tracking the output of all local media outlets – traditional news organizations but also blogs – by story, allowing users to access all the news and information about their topic of interest. In Philadelphia, J-Lab wrote a report studying the news ecosystem in advance of grant-making by local foundations (J-Lab 2010). This study documented journalistic assets in the city, focusing largely on traditional sources and was criticized for failing to consider a broad enough range of institutions and thus coverage (see Toward A Healthy Media Ecosystem for Philadelphia).

The vector and level of analysis is a crucial choice in media ecosystem studies, with important implications for future communication policy. For example, the recently released FCC report on the “Information Needs of Communities” in the digital age identifies local media ecosystems as the hardest hit by changing technology and the implosion of the revenue model of traditional journalism (Waldman 2011) There have been several any attempts to study local ecosystems, but few are comprehensive, comparative, and clear on their independent and dependent variables. Below, we discuss this in more detail.

Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis “refers to who or what is being studied” (Channels 1985 :40). Stated differently, the unit of analysis is the thing (individual, group, phenomenon) described by the variables, and is often different from the unit of observation (the main sampling unit). The unit of analysis in media ecosystem studies depends on the type of diversity being investigated. For example, The Project for Excellence in Journalism in 2010 looked at diversity in terms of the producers of news in Baltimore, MD. In this study, the news medium (print, television, etc.) was the unit of analysis, as represented by the news-source variable. After an analysis of six major storylines over a period of a week, PEJ found that although there are many different types of outlets, the newspapers provided the bulk of news, indicating low news-source diversity.

In another media ecosystem study, the “Metamorphosis” project run by Dr. Sandra Ball-Rokeach at the University of Southern California,, the geographic level of analysis is the neighborhood (micro-local). In this project, seven Los Angeles neighborhoods have been examined in terms of their “communication infrastructure,” where the unit of analysis is the mean level of feelings of belonging among residents. A final example is Entman’s (2006) study of viewpoint diversity in a story about Fallujah, Iraq. Here the level of analysis or unit of observation is the story, as reported across the national journalistic field, and the unit of analysis is the number of frames used by journalists in reporting the story (more on both of these studies below).

Independent/Dependent/Intervening Variables

In addition to different levels and units of analysis, media ecosystem studies often have independent, intervening, and dependent variables. We say “often” because some media ecosystem studies to date are meant to be more descriptive than evaluative, and therefore do not have clear, or have only implicit, independent and dependent variables. For example, the New America Foundation’s Information Community Case Studies provide detailed portraits of the information ecosystems of various cities. The implicit independent variable is the changing economic and technological context. The implicit dependent variable is the quality, accessibility and engagement with local news and information produced by the various information-producing institutions in each city. However, the

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independent variables are not varied systematically (i.e. cities are not chosen to represent different economic or technological conditions), so there are no generalizable conclusions, as of yet, as to the effect on the information ecosystems of these changing conditions.

In other media ecosystem studies, the variables are more explicit. For example, Benson (2009) asks what makes news more “multiperspectival” (diverse in its range of viewpoints). He compares a cross-section of U.S. news to a comparable cross-section of French news, allowing him to test the effect of nation-level independent variables such as amount of content regulation, subsidies for news, the structure of the political field, and the dominant form of news. He varies the sample of outlets from each country to test organization-level independent variables such as the level of funding from advertising and educational attainment of target audiences. He finds that these inputs are strongly correlated with the output. Specifically, news from outlets with the lowest amount of revenue from advertising and audiences with the highest levels of education is the most diverse in terms of viewpoint. Likewise, characteristics of the French ecosystem, such as the “debate ensemble” form of news, tend to provide a greater diversity of viewpoints.

Studies like Entman’s and Benson’s are national and international in focus. In a study of the local level Danilo Yanich (2011) looked at the television broadcast media ecosystem of Honolulu, Hawaii before and after a Shared Services Agreement (SSA) was enacted among three of the five local television stations there. His independent and dependent variables are clear – the enactment of the SSA and its effect on topic diversity and localism, respectively. His evidence, another of the indicators on which we will compare existing media ecosystem studies, was based on a content analysis of two constructed weeks – one before and one after the SSA – of newscasts from each of the five stations in the Honolulu market. He found that the number of local stories decreased on the SSA stations, but was essentially the same on the non-SSA stations. However, he found that the implementation of the SSA did not lead to a difference in story topics between stations under the SSA and those not (though there was a significant difference for both groups – a drop in local public issues but an increase in crime stories, for example – for both groups from before to after the SSA).

This points to the possibility of intervening (or spurious) variables; perhaps there was a big international news event during his sample period, leading to a decrease in coverage of local public issues. Likewise, there may have been an increase in crime, leading to more crime coverage on stations in both groups, or perhaps the SSA changed the whole ecosystem such that both types of stations changed their output. At any rate, Yanich’s research provides a promising template for testing the effects of media consolidation on local television markets, though its narrow focus on television means that it should be seen less as a media ecosystem study than an example of analysis that demonstrates the complexity of understanding news flows given the emergence of SSA’s.

In terms of dependent variables, a study of the Philadelphia media ecosystem by J-Lab sought to measure the quality of local news (operationalized as number of stories, column inches, and size of news hole devoted to public affairs) by conducting a content analysis of traditional local media (three newspapers four local television newscasts) for two periods, in August 2006 and August 2009. They find that by nearly all measures, the quality of local news has gone down. Their independent variable remains implicit, but the period between 2006 and 2009 saw both the financial crisis and the collapse of the commercial newspaper model.

Types of Diversity

In addition to varying treatments of independent and dependent variables, media ecosystem studies also often distinguish among different types of diversity, where the normative assumption in much academic research to date

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has been that diversity is better than homogeneity. For example, Gamson and Latteier (2004) identify format, demographic, and idea diversity. Napoli (1999) identifies source, content, and exposure diversity, which each have several subtypes. The overriding concerns of both policy makers and academics have been with demographic, ownership, and viewpoint diversity.

Demographic diversity refers to racial and gender diversity in every position of media ownership and production. Ownership diversity refers to the variety of individuals and/or organizations owning media outlets, as well as to the demographic characteristics of the outlet owners (which overlaps with demographic diversity). Finally, viewpoint diversity refers to the range of viewpoints present in media content.

Of course, this does not exhaust the types of diversity which may be considered. Other important types include institutional diversity, which refers to variety in terms of the organizational characteristics (e.g., funding mechanisms) e.g. Bennett 1990; Benson 2009), exposure diversity, which addresses diversity in terms of the outlets, formats, and viewpoints to which an audience exposes itself (Napoli 1999), and format diversity, which typically focuses on content types or genres (e.g. television program types).

Strengths and Weaknesses

Finally, what are the strengths, and weaknesses, of existing ecosystem studies? The most valuable media ecosystem studies are, first and foremost, locally oriented. Given the relative strength and diversity of national and, even, international news (see, e.g. FCC/Waldman 2011), we believe the focus of future research and policy must be on local production, distribution, and consumption, which is most negatively impacted by media consolidation and losses in traditional journalism capacity. Though there are excellent media ecosystem studies at the national and international levels, the sheer number of sources and complexity of the media-scape make comprehensiveness and correlation infinitely more difficult to resolve. Accordingly, we argue that the media ecosystem approach is the best suited to studying diversity at the local level, if best practices are followed.

Second, the most useful media ecosystem studies are comprehensive; they fully account for the myriad producers of information in a local ecology. In today’s multichannel, multimodal environment, this is perhaps the most daunting, but the most important, part of any ecosystem study. The New America Foundation’s Information Community case studies, discussed above, detail every news and information producer and distributor identified, at both the macro and meso levels, in each city they study. In addition to including traditional news organizations they include blogs, government offices, universities, libraries, and non-profits.

Likewise, the USC project, “Metamorphosis,” includes interpersonal communication, all local media, mainstream media, and community organizations in their survey of the “communication infrastructure” of seven Los Angeles neighborhoods. Further, by identifying independent variables, such as residential tenure and homeownership, and intervening variables, such as unsafe streets and low-quality public schools, the USC researchers were able to rank the neighborhoods in terms of the strength of their communication infrastructures as it relates to residents’ sense of belonging.

This alludes to another best practice, clear independent and dependent variables. To identify which forces are responsible for which outcomes, a study must have explicit independent and dependent variables. Part and parcel of identifying outcomes based on specific inputs is some sort of comparison. Therefore the Metamorphosis study compares seven neighborhoods by their rates of home ownership and residential tenure, as well as the scope of connections to community organizations, the scope of local media connections, and the intensity of participation in

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neighborhood storytelling, all with an eye toward how these factors affect sense of belonging. Likewise, Ho and Quinn (2009) study the impact of five newspaper mergers on the range of viewpoints expressed in the affected papers’ editorials. The study has an explicit independent variable – the mergers, an explicit dependent variable – post-merger range of viewpoint, and comparison – between the five different mergers. They also identify intervening variables, such as natural (i.e. death-related) turnover on the editorial board.

Finally, the most useful studies – whether they are at the local, regional, national, or international level – make use of the latest tools and databases, for things like tracking broadband penetration and speeds and accounting for various types of census data including household income and education levels, civic involvement, and audience demographics.

The weaknesses are largely the implied opposites of the strengths. While often useful, studies that look at only a sample of existing information sources, or do not have clear independent and dependent variables, while often useful, are not ideal. Of course, the reason so many studies do not live up to the ideal is because it is both expensive and time-intensive and because obtaining the relevant data is often challenging. However, we believe a comprehensive, comparative, clearly defined, locally oriented media ecosystem study (or series of studies) is the best way to identify areas of improvement in the contemporary media policy space.

For the purpose of 21st century media policy, the relevant independent variables at the local level are likely to be access to technology, demographic characteristics, economic factors such as homeownership, health and viability of local civic institutions (libraries, churches, etc.), and public investment in local communications infrastructure. Relevant dependent variables include things such as voter turnout, disaster preparedness, community connectedness feelings of belonging, and other measures of civic engagement. The J-Lab study of Philadelphia (2010: 2), for example, identifies “a well-informed electorate, an accountable leadership and a robust sense of place” as important dependent variables. However they are conceived, operationalizing these variables in a way that is both policy-relevant and palatable to all parties involved will be the most difficult – yet most pressing – task.

A rare effort to link media ecosystem assessment with community health assessment can be found in Modarres’ and Pitkin’s 2006 study, "Technology and the Geography of Inequality in Los Angeles." In this study, the authors determined the correlation between socioeconomic status and access to technology in Los Angeles, utilizing data such as a personal computer ownership, home Internet access, phone availability, labor force participation, and the distribution of banks, check cashing locations, and other types of local businesses. Perhaps predictably, they found a clear relationship between access to technology and indicators such as socioeconomic status, race, age, and educational attainment. These qualities, in turn, were clustered geographically, allowing them to assess “how different levels of access to technology, at [the] neighborhood level, correlate with existing patterns of socio-spatial characteristics and the level of access to traditional urban services” (pp. 4).Along similar lines, Wilkin, et al. (2007), “Comparing the Communication Ecologies of Geo-ethnic Communities,” explicitly aims to “highlight and persuade researchers and practitioners of the advantages of studying communication ecosystems – the web of interpersonal and media (new and old/mainstream and geo-ethnic) connections that people construct in the course of everyday life” (pp. 2). The authors – including Director of the Metamorphosis project, Dr. Ball-Rokeach – investigate the communication patterns of communities of different races and countries of origin living within Los Angeles. Using census data and proprietary broadband adoption data, as well as interviews, focus groups, and content analysis, the researchers were able to study media use and communication as it is actually practiced, fulfilling one of the key mandates of the Third Circuit in both Prometheous I and II. Incorporating this analytical approach will yield

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informative in-depth profiles of local media ecosystems and the communities they serve. (cf. Kim and Ball-Rokeach 2006).

More recently the, pilot “Infotoolkit” (http://infotoolkit.org) launched by the Knight Foundation in February of 2011 provides a methodology and tools for communities to use for self-assessment of their media-ecosystems. Its existence suggests that these tasks can be executed by community members and provide a basis for a broad swath of the population to engage in projects to assess and improve their media ecosystem.

Section 4: Knowledge can be gained from parallel civic indicators projects

A number of organizations not focused on media have employed the ecosystem approach in potentially useful assessments of a wide range of dimensions of local communities. Often the data employed are highly localized, sorted by county or even neighborhood. Where applicable, these existing studies and datasets should be incorporated into media ecology assessments.

For example, The Jefferson Institute, with funding from the Knight Foundation, developed Patchwork Nation, a highly sophisticated interactive map that categorizes all counties nationwide into 12 types of communities. The typologies compare counties to nationwide averages, such as median household income, religiosity, and industrial sectors.

The City of Madison, Wis., in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducts a Neighborhood Indicators Project ( that maps Madison neighborhoods according to demographics, crime, education rates, and other indicators. The goal of this project is to “quantify and represent visually the diverse and changing social conditions in Madison neighborhoods” (p. 4). Of particular interest here, the project includes a “youth opportunity index” that measures the proximity of community centers, schools, and libraries, the methodology and data from which could be used to describe the accessibility of public anchor institutions providing Internet access to individual neighborhoods. The data gathered for the project could provide the foundation for a case study of Madison or a methodology for another major city. More generally, the Neighborhood Indicators Project provides the type of baseline data that will act as the independent variables in a media ecosystem study.

The "Soul of the Community" (Knight Foundaiton and Gallup, Inc. 2010) study, commissioned by the Knight Foundation and conducted by Gallup, used a large-scale survey to find out which qualities of a place are most closely correlated with feelings of attachment to one’s city. They found that a city’s social offerings (vibrant nightlife, good places to meet people), openness (good place for minorities, people with children), aesthetics, education, and basic services were positively correlated with feeling attached to one’s hometown. Higher levels of attachment, in turn, were correlated with local GDP growth. The study looks at 26 communities across the U.S. in which James and John L Knight owned newspapers, finding varying levels of attachment. Like the Neighborhood Indicators Project, which provides the type of data that will act as the independent variables in a media ecology study, the level of attachment is one of the dependent variables. The SoC study does not look at the quality of local news as a factor in attachment, but we suspect that it is correlated.

Pew, in partnership with Monitor Institute, undertook a similar study on “How the Public Perceives Community Information.” This research explored the relationship between the level of sharing of government information and how residents feel about the city and its civic institutions. The researchers surveyed residents of three cities – Philadelphia, San Jose, and Macon, Georgia – asking questions such as whether they feel their local government does a good job of sharing information, and about the performance of other local institutions. They then correlated

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the answers, finding that, for example, people who think their government does a good job of sharing information are more likely to be satisfied with other civic institutions, such as the fire department and local media.

“America’s Civic Health Index,” developed by the National Conference on Citizenship, similarly surveys thousands of respondents each year to measure nationwide civic engagement. Survey questions include participation in volunteering, community meetings, and nonprofit organizations; written expression of political views; and remaining informed about political news. A media ecosystem analysis would supplement findings like these by comparing them to the strength of local information institutions and conducting content analyses of the actual news in these communities.

Section 5: International Attempts at Understanding Media Ecosystems

The EU Media Pluralism Monitor

In 2009, The European Union released its "Independent Study on Indicators for Media Pluralism in the Member States," which offers a "Media Pluralism Monitor...to identify potential risks to media pluralism in Member States."

With its Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM), the European Union took a very sophisticated and ambitious approach to understanding the interplay between media pluralism (diversity concept which overlaps substantially with the concept of diversity) and other relevant factors. The MPM includes "many aspects, ranging from, for example, merger control rules to content requirements in broadcasting licensing systems, the establishment of editorial freedoms, the independence and status of public service broadcasters, the professional situation of journalists, the relationship between media and political actors, etc. It encompasses all measures that ensure citizens’ access to a variety of information sources and voices, allowing them to form opinions without the undue influence of one

dominant opinion forming power.” (Independent Study on Indicators for Media Pluralism in the Member States,” p.2.) Here, we see appropriately expansive parameters for the assessment of media ecosystems.

Contrary to the FCC's focus on economic indicators, specifically ownership, the EU's monitoring tool addresses the entire range of factors influencing diversity, including:

legal indicators, including the presence or absence of legal structures to protect/promote freedom of speech,

journalistic practice, freedom of information, access to official information, diversity of media ownership, diversity of viewpoints and content types, alternative, minority-targeted, community, and public service media, broadband access, and media literacy.

Socio-demographic indicators, including the extent to which public service media are engaged with new

media; the extent to which online media platforms support public participation; the extent to which journalistic coverage is overtly politicized; the extent to which political entities are capable of influencing media outlets; the extent to which media workforces, media outlets, and media content are culturally diverse and address the needs of minority groups; the extent of centralization of national and local media systems; and the extent to which citizens and citizens groups engage in online political activity.

Political-economic indicators, including concentration of ownership and levels of competition in content

production; distribution and advertising arenas; the number and financial performance of media outlets in various platforms; subsidy levels for public service and alternative media; and supply levels for news and public affairs content.

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The EU's Media Pluralism Monitor may represent the most wide-ranging and ambitious effort yet by a governmental entity to assess the structure and performance of national media systems. The EU's effort contrasts starkly with the FCC's Diversity Index in terms of the extent to which it illustrates that understanding today's media ecosystems requires looking beyond media ownership, or, at the very least, not focusing on media ownership in isolation.”Pluralism of ownership is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for ensuring media pluralism,” the EU report states. And, “Media ownership rules need to be complemented by other provisions.” Another major difference is that the EU considers all media. Whereas the U.S. currently regulates only broadcast outlets, the EU recognizes that diversity needs to be supported across media. We believe that U.S. media policy would benefit from a similarly expansive approach to evaluating the state of media diversity.

However, the scale of this project and perhaps the political implications of its results have meant that the EU has currently not commissioned detailed assessments using the completed tool in individual EU countries. This may be a function of the fact that the methodology that was outlined, which was truly ambitious and data-intensive, was simply too expensive to act upon. Or, it may be that the understandably treacherous politics of assessing media ecosystems can stifle or subvert efforts at rigorous, objective analysis.

A large number of other indices assess media patterns internationally, in formats that are difficult to translate to studies of local ecosystems. However, while national-scale data on media viability and technology access is problematic for community-level research, it often provides methodologies and indicators that potentially are replicable on a localized scale, as well as valuable contextual information. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has published a paper, “Media Development Indicators: A Framework for Assessing Media Development,” that proposes a series of indicators of media development. The report urges that “media development” indicators be in accordance with the priority areas of the International Programme for the Development of Communication. The report does not contain data per se but details a large number of indicators to permit evaluation of the adequacy of media development on a national scale.

Mapping Digital Media

Similarly, MediaPolicy.org, highlights research commissioned by the Open Society Institute and others which examines the influence of new media technology on journalistic practices, media economics, and patterns of news consumption. Its “Mapping Digital Media” project investigates the role of digital media in 50+ countries, using indicators of broadband penetration, spectrum allocation policy, ownership diversity, and a series of other measurements.2

Other Projects

NationMaster.com has compiled statistics on technology ownership, media sources, and media production according to country. The International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Digital Access Index uses a combination of literacy, telecommunication subscription, and bandwidth indicators to rank countries in terms of access to and use of information technology. The index, along with numerous other statistical studies from the ITU, measures Internet availability via broadband penetration and competitiveness in the telecommunications industry. Some of these data are available via the World Bank data portal.

2 Disclosure: The New America Foundation is authored the United States component of this study.

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Many international indices are dedicated to measuring press and Internet freedom within different countries. Applied to local ecosystem case studies, these data can speak to government policy toward telecommunications accessibility and the potential for supporting a diversity of viewpoints in online media. For example, Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net index analyzes a sampling of countries’ legal freedoms with respect to the Internet and electronic communications. The index uses indicator questions to measure government-imposed barriers to online access, content restrictions, and liability penalties. Freedom House also publishes a yearly report identifying the greatest threats to independent media in almost 200 countries worldwide (see “Freedom of the Press 2012”). The survey uses a series of questions examining the legal, political, and economic barriers to press freedom. Countries are then ranked and categorized according to a composite score of the indicators. In a similar fashion, the Open Net Initiative, supported by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, and The Citizen Lab, at the Munk School of Global Affairs, has set up a project to analyze Internet filtering across the globe.

Likewise, the International Research & Exchanges Board employs a Media Sustainability Index for the worldwide conditions of independent media. The index uses indicators of the lawfulness of free and independent speech, quality standards of journalism, multiplicity of news sources, and role of support institutions. Though reporting only nationwide measures, and only for Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, IREX has developed indicators of the health of independent media that can be replicated and localized.

Section 6: Conclusion

This paper has sought to describe the current state of information ecosystem assessment as it exists around the United States and internationally. Despite the value of cross-national comparisons, any evaluation of 21st century media ecosystems needs to understand how well media serve local communities.

There are many challenges inherent in trying to understand local media ecosystems in rapid transition. Moreover, as a result, the dynamics of how our media system serves and affects local communities and their democratic process are also in a state of flux. Unlike the 1990s, there is no lack of empirical research, though most is limited in scope, and uncoordinated. Much is narrowly focused on econometric analysis. We need to allow for the analysis of trends over time, as well as a complete understanding of the findings, strengths, and weaknesses of the broadest set approaches to date. This could involve one meta-study project and the integration of the large community that can aid in growing the base of knowledge. However, such efforts will be complicated by evolving technologies that likely render obsolete much of the empirical research undertaken in the 1990s.

To move forward this, and to understand how well current policies meet the FCC’s imperatives of diversity, localism and competition, will require an understanding of the following:

Content: How much is produced? Who produces what? What are the levels of internal and external pluralism in the ecosystem as a whole?

Information Networks: How does news and information flow? Are individuals or community groups or new outlets producing original content, or is legacy content simply bouncing between a greater number of outlets? Who is consuming and what type of information are they paying attention to?

Information and News Institutions: What institutions are involved? No longer is publishing the province of only the radio, television, and newspaper. Libraries, journalism schools, low power radio, public access, and, increasingly, social media and government are playing a more important role. What role are social media playing?

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Access: Who has access to information? Who can contribute information? What barriers, such as access to broadband exist? Access at what speed? Understanding how access varies across rural and urban geography, across age groups, across socio-economic strata, across ethnic and minority groups and the poor is particularly important.

Engagement: Who has the ability to engage with the information? Availability of information and technology does not ensure the media fluency necessary in a two-way, participatory media ecosystem. Those who participate should also have the ability to assess the health of their own ecosystem.

Providing a comprehensive and credible analysis will be time-consuming and require an extended timeline, but it is a vital step in ensuring that all citizens can contribute to democracy in a twenty-first century media ecosystem. Furthermore, as we have begun to show, for comprehensive media ecosystem mapping to be of maximum value, it should exhibit a strong relationship to some of the fundamental social outcomes that are presumed to be related to a well-functioning media ecosystem, such as the ability of citizens to demand and put to use information about their communities. As the Knight Commission rightly noted, any efforts to develop a detailed assessment of media ecosystems must also study how these ecosystems affect social outcomes. If such relationships can be established, then the assessment of local media ecosystems can produce results that go beyond being simple indicators of differences in media ecosystems across markets or over time. Instead, such assessments become meaningful predictors of the overall health of individual communities, as defined by the selected social outcomes.

To reiterate: we recommend that media ecosystem studies are executed at the local level, encompass micro, meso and institutional (macro) forms of communication, and address the primary contexts in which citizens receive information on politics, day to day events, community issues, and natural disasters.

Further, a media ecosystem analysis should be defined by clear independent and dependent variables, allowing us to answer questions such as how the availability and quality of local news correlates with levels of knowledge about local politics, or how home-ownership correlates with feelings of belonging. Crucially, a media ecosystem, when defined by clear independent variables, may be compared with other media ecosystems, such that the relative importance of the independent variables to the desired outcomes may be assessed. This conception, we believe, will come closest to reflecting the reality on the ground.

Such studies will permit experts to evaluate media regulation to ensure, per Justice Black, that it safeguards “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources.” We also see studies that take this holistic view as a means to mobilize citizens, advocacy groups, industry organizations, NGOs, and policymakers to take action to improve these ecosystems and, ultimately, to enhance the democratic impact of mediated communication.

Though this approach demands a large amount of time and resources, the many efforts to map local ecosystems can go a long way to streamlining the effort. However, it will be critically important to interrogate all existing data in order to avoid imposing assumptions about media and information resources upon communities. Ultimately, this work needs to be conducted with an intense focus on how the output could serve a practical need and aid community leaders as they think about how to serve their community’s information needs.

Acknowledgements

Additional research by Daniel Amzallag and Jason Smith. Many thanks to Hibah Hussein and Danielle Kehl for their close reading and editing of later drafts.

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Appendix A

Level of Analysis – Geographic

Level of Analysis – Comm

Unit of Analysis

Independent Variable (*=implicit)

Dependent Variable (*=implicit)

Evidence Type(s) of Diversity Studied

Pew Baltimore Study

Local (city of Baltimore)

Macro and meso

News Medium

None None Content analysis and discourse mapping

Source

Slices of Boulder Local (city of Boulder)

Macro and meso

News story None None Discourse mapping Source

J-Lab Philly study Local (city of Philadelphia)

Macro and meso

Quality of local news

Financial crisis, intro of new media+

Quality of local news Content analysis, interviews, survey of new media

Source

Metamorphosis Micro-Local (7 Los Angeles neighborhoods

Micro, meso, and macro

Mean level of feelings of belonging

Many (residential tenure, home ownership, etc.)

Residents’ feelings of belonging

Census/broadband data, interviews, focus groups, content analysis

None; of use as a template for ecosystem analysis

2010 New America Foundation

Metropolitan Macro and meso

Organizational structure

Economic and technological context*

Quality, accessibility and engagement with local news and info.*

Qualitative interviews, survey

Source

Madison Commons Local (City of Madison)

Macro and meso

Organizational structure

Hyperlocal news at meso-level

Quality of local news; civic engagement

Qualitative interviews, surveys

Lear Center LA study

Local (city of Los Angeles)

Macro Story topic None Quality of local news

Content analysis Format

Univ of Del. Honolulu study

DMA Macro News story Station mgt / ownership status

Quality of local news

Content analysis Ownership/ content/ production factors

Univ of Del study 8 DMAs

DMA Macro News story Station mgt / ownership status

Quality of local news

Content analysis Ownership/ content/ production factors

Univ of Del study 27 DMAs

DMA Macro news story Station ownership status/ DMA characteristics

Proportion of local news (localsim

Content analysis Ownership/ content /production factors

Univ of Del study 17 DMAs

DMA Macro new story Station ownership status/ DMA characteristics

Proportion of local news (localism

Content analysis Ownership/content/production factors

Univ of Del study 20 DMAs

DMA Macro news story Station characteristics / DMA characteristics

Quality of crime news

Content analysis Quality/quantity of crime news

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Appendix B: Data available in the United States This section reviews the range of existing tools and data sources that are available to be employed in the development of rigorous assessment tools for media ecosystems.

Resources on Broadcast Outlets

Fairly comprehensive information sources exist for publicly owned and public-access media outlets, especially for public television. In this case, the intrastate distribution of stations, according to city, may indicate the degree of localization of publicly funded journalism. The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) provides a list of public or noncommercial television stations in each state, specified by city of broadcast.

The National Center for Media Engagement (NCME), funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has constructed a data map integrating numerous maps of different media sectors, such as public media outlets, public access centers, low-power radio stations. Additionally it shows the intersection between public or nonprofit media and their funding sources. After locating public radio and television stations nationwide, the map identifies and describes foundation grants, media research funding, and local journalism centers.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) issues an annual report to Congress, “Services to Minorities and Diverse Audiences.” The reports are primarily qualitative, describing CPB’s programs and services regarding diversity, though they do provide some quantitative data on station hiring, and employment. They also include demographic data about “minority-controlled stations.” However, the potential for application to localized ecosystems appears limited, as most quantitative data are presented on a national scale.

Resources on News Production and Consumption

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) routinely issues a Newsroom Employment Census to measure the diversity of journalists and media staffers. The report provides percentages of different ethnic groups employed at approximately 900 daily newspapers nationwide. These data are aggregated regionally and nationally and described according to job category and retention rate.

Several organizations provide directories of local media outlets, helping to create a picture of the robustness and quality of journalism serving a community. These listings, which can usually be sorted according to state and county, are useful for uncovering oft-overlooked local outlets, but are often incomplete. For example, the Suburban Newspapers Association has a membership directory (ASNE Resources) of the 2,000 local newspapers it represents. The organization’s website also issues a number of industry reports, including nationwide surveys of suburban residents, describing readership demographics and revenue operations. These data provide a convenient way of studying a partial list of the newspapers that serve a particular ecosystem, though heavily urban areas are excluded from the association.

Similarly, the Association of Free Community Papers is developing a directory of the 3,000 free-circulation, community-based newspapers that it represents, and PaperChain lists multiple regional organizations of community-based newspapers and may soon provide their own directories within particular states or regions of the United States.

The Center for Public Integrity’s "Media Tracker" project has mapped media ownership across many aspects media and provides This tool permits anyone to see data for any geographical area regarding the television, radio, cable, broadband and newspapers.

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Several organizations conduct audits of print and online newspapers for circulation and readership. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) provides a searchable, online database of its independent audits to members, though its results are mostly limited to major, long-established newspapers. The Circulation Verification Council (CVC) performs similarly independent, third-party audits of approximately 4,900 editions. Its results are searchable online by zip code but are limited to the organization’s clients, which for the most part do not include major newspapers. Together, these tools can capture information about the viability and robustness of an ecosystem’s newspapers as well as the reliance of population segments on different types of media.

In an effort to measure the demographics of newspaper readers with regards to content, Kenneth Fleming of the Reynolds Journalism Institute and Brian Steffens of the National Newspaper Association (NNA), used surveys to identify which demographics read which sections of a newspaper the most (see 2011 Community Newspaper Readership Survey). Their analysis has focused on ecosystems with small populations, and addressed the issue of diversity of viewpoints in the media, especially with regard to minority populations. Such an analysis could additionally serve as a foundation for investigating engagement with media-delivered information according to socioeconomic status.

Resources on Startup and Community News Organizations

A few directories exclusively list independent or community-based media outlets. The Knight Citizen News Network provides a Directory of Community Media that maps independent and community media across the country. The list includes over 800 independently owned local blogs, wikis and online publications. It is designed to guide both ordinary citizens and traditional journalists in launching and operating community news and information sites. Users can add unlisted websites to the database by nominating them to J-Lab, KCNN’s administrator, who contacts and surveys the sites in question. More recently these have been supplemented by The News Frontier Database operated by The Columbia Journalism Review that seeks to profile local operations across the country.

In addition, the recently launched Community Media Database contains information on all public radio and television stations, all cable access channels, and all known low-power FM radio stations. It uses data from the FCC, data collected from cable access stations, and data from low power radio stations. In addition, the Buske Group has also developed a framework for analyzing cable franchise agreements from the perspective of community needs and regulation.

Knight Media Policy Fellow Jessica Durkin has catalogued the growing number of community news websites on her blog inothernews.us. Michelle McLellan formerly of the Reynolds Journalism Institute has created a list that further analyzes new news sites, dividing them into categories – new traditionals, community, micro-local, niche, mini-sites, local news systems and aggregators. These data sources can hopefully provide an efficient means of researching the extensiveness of community media within a particular ecology.

Resources on Arts and Community Organizations

The National Alliance for Media Art & Culture (NAMAC) conducted a study, “Mapping the Media Arts Field,” between 2005 and 2008 that sought to develop empirical data about the field of media arts nationwide, specifically through indicators of economic viability, community basis, and creativity. NAMAC additionally provides a directory of media arts organizations across the country sorted according to state or city (see “NAMAC Directory of Organizations”).

Resources on Internet and Broadband Penetration

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Developing a detailed inventory of broadband availability and adoption is an ongoing nationwide challenge. Case studies of media ecosystems cannot ignore the role of Internet access in obtaining and disseminating digital media and other online information.Accordingly, a number of indexes measure broadband penetration and technology ownership within communities.

In 2006, the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs, of California State University, Los Angeles, published a report on digital technology inequalities in Los Angeles. “Technology and the Geography of Inequality in Los Angeles” not only provides an abundance of raw data and maps relating to Los Angeles’ connectivity, but also illustrates a multi-phase methodology for data mining on a community’s “digital divide.” The authors correlated socioeconomic typologies, assembled with a broad array of indicators, with indicators of technology availability to develop recommendations for increasing access. Applied to other ecosystems, the report’s indices could describe the availability of high-speed Internet across different demographics. Similarly, the State Science & Technology Institute provides a list of over 60 indicators and indices of national and regional innovation.

Despite the current difficulties in gathering data, there are several sources of data

At the federal level, the release of more detailed FCC Form 477 data on availability and competition and the inclusion of broadband-related information in the decennial census will be helpful. Additionally, some states will make a meaningful contribution to the federal broadband map commissioned through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009;

State and municipal websites inform researchers on both government policy toward promoting Internet access as well as the current state of Internet availability. The Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development website, for example, outlines the state’s publicly funded broadband initiatives and maps different types of reported broadband coverage throughout the state.

OTI's Measurement Lab (M-Lab) broadband measurement platform recently adopted by the FCC is an additional source. The data provided by M-Lab tools can be utilized to understand the quality of a broadband connection. This is important in the current market where advertised download and upload speeds are exclusively provided as "up to", with no disclosure of the actual or typical speeds.

The Personal Telco Project in Portland, Oregon has developed a methodology using off-the-shelf equipment to assess the coverage and bandwidth of publicly-available wireless networks against their performance claims.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance and its New Rules Project have worked to map community broadband networks

The National Center for Media Engagement (NCME) provides a mapping tool and keeps a database current of federally funded broadband projects at publicmediamaps.org.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop’s Connected Project (IRW, 2012) released comprehensive geo-data regarding access in March 2012 (see “Data: Broadband Files”). It integrates data from the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Resources on Libraries

The American Library Association wrote a comprehensive report on libraries, funding and technology access in 2011, “Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2010-2011.” The ALA also maintains a database of library statistics.3

Resources on Schools and Digital Access

Ecosystem studies should additionally examine the prevalence of Internet access in public institutions, such as schools and libraries. National, state, and municipal library websites can often provide information about locations and hours of library branches within a particular media ecosystem. These sites usually describe the amount and nature of Internet access in libraries—a crucial service for citizens without personal broadband access—and may provide information about professional assistance and digital literacy services.

The United States Department of Education has also issued reports on Internet access, specifically in public schools. Similarly, the DOE has published findings on children’s computer and Internet access both at home and at school, as well as survey results on the degree of computer use for different activities. Though usefully crossing connectivity data with socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic data, the DOE publishes only nationwide percentages. This limitation creates difficulty for local ecology studies but can demonstrate “digital divide” correlations on a national scale. More problematically, the most recent data in these reports ranges from 2000 to 2005.

With regard to public schools, media and digital literacy programs are equally important as schools’ Internet access. Some organizations that are dedicated to media literacy education provide reports on media literacy in public schools and guidelines for teachers, but most do not have statistical information on media literacy curricula in specific public school districts. The National Association for Media Literacy Education, funded in part by media companies, and the Action Coalition for Media Education (which receives no media industry funding), are two such organizations that support media educators. Their websites could be useful in developing indicator criteria for measuring media education in an ecosystem but do not provide any raw data per se.

Resources on Open Government Initiatives

A handful of organizations measure the roles of government and civil society in both providing and helping citizens engage with information. Sunshine Review, an open-source, nonprofit website, evaluates local governments with a transparency checklist of several indicators. The website examines government websites for the presence of budget, lobbying, public meetings, tax, and other information. County and state evaluation pages are open-source, including a government’s ultimate “grade” on transparency. Sunshine Review provides a centralized, accessible portal for ascertaining the availability of government and social service information as well as a given government’s overall policy of transparency.

Census and Economic Data

The census data on small businesses provides a wealth of detail on the information industry, including geographic distribution, number of employees, and minority and woman ownership.

The 2010 State New Economy Index, developed by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, measures the “economic structure” of a given state with indicators of private-sector growth, knowledge-based jobs,

3 See “Library Statistics,” available at http://www.ala.org/research/librarystats

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technological innovation capacity, and digital penetration. The foundation’s report ranks states according to their index score, while additionally supplying the raw data used as indicators. The end of the report lists online sources for its indicators, providing for future research. Through difficult to localize, the index does make an attempt to link economic responsiveness to technological change. Obviously its focus on the private sector is only a component of what an index looking at media and communications needs to address.

Appendix C: List of Organizations

Annenberg School, University of Southern California

Center for Communications and Democracy, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Center for Community Research and Service, University of Delaware

Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs

Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism

Applied Population Laboratory, University of Wisconsin

Appendix D: List of university affiliated academics engaged in media ecosystem research

Sandra Ball-Rokeach, University of Southern California

Lew Friedland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Philip M. Napoli, Fordham University

Danilo Yanich, University of Delaware

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