News

This project investigates the role of influencers—people with large and devoted social media followings—in the digital media ecosystem. It will track online publishers’ evolving partnerships with influencers, as well as the phenomenon of journalists as influencers. Finally, it will examine how the position of influencers (and creators, in the parlance of social media platforms) as neither brands nor traditional users complicates their role in advertising, and what that means for emerging business models in journalism.

Project lead: George Tsiveriotis

This project examines the expert networks of economic news on social media and the ways they are involved in the everyday routines of journalism.

Project lead: Burcu Baykurt

A project investigating the degree to which editors and reporters think about audiences as they produce and publish stories—and how it influences their decision-making.

Project lead: James Robinson

This project explores the way that three news organizations (City Bureau, Hearken, and The Chicago Tribune) conceptualize, implement, and measure audience engagement. At a moment when the news media’s credibility and economic sustainability are in doubt, this project examines what journalists in both traditional and innovative newsrooms believe “success” should look like. In doing so, it attempts to answer the question: Are journalism’s goals changing, or just its methods?

Project lead: Jacob Nelson

In 2017, smart speaker purchases grew by nearly 300% with more than 24 million Americans now owning voice assisted devices according to Edison research. This rapid adoption is expected to continue: an estimated 75% of U.S. households will own a smart speaker by 2020. As the number of homes in the U.S. with these voice assistant smart speakers grows, Americans are able to access news and information in new ways. However, little is known today about how user interaction with these devices inform understanding of the news cycle or the way consumers interpret audio news and information these devices deliver. This team will study user interaction and news IQ between Americans who use voice assistants as part of their media diet and those who do not. This research focuses around three key areas:

• Trust: Does using smart speakers change the listener’s relationship with news/media brands?
• Confirmation bias and partisanship: Does usage of smart speakers reinforce existing perspectives, or help change minds/drive discussion?
• Understanding of current events: Does regular smart speaker usage make people informed about what’s happening in the world?

The team will also be conducting qualitative interviews with publishers and working to find insights from device manufacturers to better understand the way information and created and presented to consumers.

Project leads: Kaizar Campwala, Kate Seabury

In recent years, social tasks and strategies have been integrated into work processes across newsrooms, and social media-based reporting and sourcing are taking an increasingly central place in journalism work. And yet, news distribution on social media is often discussed in strategic more than editorial terms. Many in legacy news organizations still consider the editorial voice conveyed on social media as extraterritorial and secondary to the core journalistic voice reflected in the full stories published on proprietary news sites.

For the majority of the public, however, social platforms have become a prominent source of news, and social content a significant part of the service offered by news outlets. Stories posted on news organizations’ social feeds are guaranteed enhanced visibility, accessibility, and public resonance, compared to those published only on their proprietary news sites. The editorial decision to distribute a certain story on social media is thus not only a coveted resource in the newsroom, but also a matter of public relevance.

This project examines the stories that news organizations promote on social media from an editorial perspective. The study will offer a comparison of the total body of content that news organizations publish on their own sites with the subset of content they promote on social platforms. By comparing the total body of stories published on leading news sites with the curated content they choose to amplify on social media (and the language used to introduce them), this study provides insight into the news landscape constructed on social platforms, and whether it diverges from the one offered on news organizations’ own proprietary platforms. Interviews with social editors will provide further insight into how they make curatorial decisions on which stories to promote on social media.

Project lead: Efrat Nechushtai

U.S. journalists and news outlets are well aware that political polarization is leading to increasing levels of mistrust in news media. Conservative news media have been developing their own media networks for decades, and they have significant influence, shaping a wide swath of conservative Americans’ understanding of political life. Conservative media outlets present their audiences with distinct understandings of particular issues. Furthermore, historical research, such as Nicole Hemmer’s Messengers of the Right, suggests that conservative journalism introduces ways of knowing and assumptions about truth and legitimacy that can differ markedly from dominant professional journalistic norms.

This study will conduct interviews with journalists, editors, and other workers at conservative news outlets. As part of the study, newsroom visits or opportunities to shadow reports may also be arranged. The goal of the study will be to understand some of the basic news values, news routines, and audience engagement strategies animating different conservative news outlets. The research questions being investigated include:

• How do conservative news outlets make decisions about prioritizing news stories? How do they define what makes a “good story”?
• Which aspects of professional journalistic norms do these outlets accept and which do they reject? What claims do they make about sources of journalistic truth?  How do they implement routines for story selection, fact-checking, editorial review, and making corrections when errors are identified?
• What sense do reporters and editors have of their users/audiences? How do audience metrics or other user feedback mechanisms inform the selection and presentation of news?

This study recognizes there is a great variety of approaches among conservative news outlets. While it will not be able to cover the entire range, it will focus on differences and similarities between three types of online conservative outlets: born-digital, commercial outlets; non-profit news sites; and the online reporting of well-established legacy sources.

Project leads: A.J. Bauer, Anthony Nadler

For "You Are Here," the team built, tested, and refined a completely open-source system for distributing audio stories and other journalistic content to local audiences via a small, independent wifi router. In addition to providing a uniquely local audio portrait of two iconic New York City locations—Tompkins Square Park and the High Line—"You Are Here" is a template for distributing journalistic stories in a way that is affordable and resilient, requiring only a power supply and a user's smartphone. Such a system has the potential to keep information accessible, even when the Internet is not. The final report was published in spring 2017.

Project lead: Sarah Grant

Team members: Amelia Marzec, Susan McGregor, Dan Phiffer, Benjamen Walker

This project examines what political polarization and urban-rural divisions look like in the daily lives of residents at the local level—and what role local media may play in creating spaces for dialogue across parties and demographics.The project is rooted in a case study of a predominantly Republican-leaning region of Kentucky. This includes the more “purple” college town of Bowling Green, home of the infamous “Bowling Green Massacre,” as well as the more rural area of Ohio County, which is more solidly “red.” Using a communication infrastructure theory framework, this project examine residents’ communication storytelling networks. Through a series of focus groups, “story diaries,” and interviews, it explores residents’ access to communication resources, interactions they do or do not have with “others” in their community, and their attitudes towards local and national media. This study also looks at the needs of local and rural journalists—and how they may contribute to a region that is more connected and engaged. Following the study—and a related workshop for local and regional media, community stakeholders, and actors working in engagement journalism, solutions journalism, and rural/local journalism—the project is designing possible projects that respond to local needs and seek to create opportunities for dialogue and engagement.

Project lead: Andrea Wenzel

Team member: Sam Ford

In partnership with the Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab, this project looks at mobile news delivery and consumption habits through a content analysis of publishers’ use of mobile notifications over two three-week periods—the first period around the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and the second period in spring 2017. This analysis will then be contextualized with interviews with news organization representatives involved in mobile notification strategy and delivery, as well as user focus groups.

Project lead: Emily Bell

Team members: Pete Brown, Andrea Wenzel 

This project aims to study the creation and consumption of automated news for forecasts of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Project lead: Andreas Graefe

This study examined how journalistic organizations manage for impact and the challenges and opportunities that arise when newsrooms apply impact thinking to journalistic practice. This project presents a history of impact theory, and features a study of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)’s approach to story choice, production, and distribution. While measuring the impact of individual organizations or projects can be incredibly difficult, the study found that reporters can keep the spotlight on the issues of the journalism by sticking with their stories long after the initial publication. The final report was published in spring 2017.

Project leads: Lindsay Green-Barber, Fergus Pitt

This study examines the case of a local public radio initiative attempting to engage historically underrepresented audiences through a year-long outreach experiment. Curious City, a series produced by WBEZ Chicago Public Media, uses the Hearken digital engagement platform to invite listeners to ask and vote on questions, and then participate in the reporting process. Drawing from interviews and observations, the study examines best practices to combine digital and offline strategies, and the importance of pre- and post-broadcast engagement. The study also reflects on journalistic norms and approaches to participatory media, local news “storytelling networks,” and relations between public media and marginalized publics. The final report was published in spring 2017.

Project lead: Andrea Wenzel

A report on the response of small U.S. market newspapers to the shift to digital technology in everything from editorial content to distribution to advertising.

Project leads: Christopher Ali, Damian Radcliffe

This computational journalism project was developed to help political journalists by providing a useable yet comprehensive summary of the content and sentiment that flows through social media during presidential campaigns. Over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, the Illuminating team collected all of the Facebook and Twitter messages by the 17 Republican and five Democratic candidates. The research team also developed a system to categorize each post by message type: calls to action, image, advocacy, issue, and attack messages. This system could be applied to any campaign, and is easily searchable by journalists to find trends in and compare politicians’ communications.

Project lead: Jenny Stromer-Galley