Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research
This follow-up report builds on our previous analysis and provides some detail about the demographic factors of counties that contribute to disparities in local news access and reporting. This report shares some of the same limitations. First, analysis was based on recent content rather than a random sample. A constructed week sample for vetting both critical information needs and coverage areas would increase the representativeness of these analyses. However, we chose an approach that would maintain consistency with data from the U.S. News Deserts database, which formed the basis of this report.
One of the primary limitations of this analysis is that it is based on counts of news outlets alone and does not take into consideration the size and capacity of staff in news organizations. For example, Wake County has the lowest number of news outlets per 10,000 but is home to two of the largest newsrooms in the state. Future research should incorporate measures of reporting capacity and output into analyses of news ecosystems.
As in the earlier portion of this report, this study did not assess the amount of reporting or examine the specifics of topics covered in reporting, but the differences in the number of outlets accessible to a county and reporting about a county and vice versa raise an important question for future research— what are the topics and critical information needs that are reported about a community versus the ones that are reported for a community? This is a particularly relevant question in regards to the finding about the reporting gap for counties with more non-white residents: Are there certain topics that may drive this increased reporting?
Further, although examining local news in North Carolina at the county level is generally appropriate and consistent with the population density of the state, this proved a challenge in the course of our analyses. Many NC counties share similar demographics and include communities along the demographic spectrum. As seen in the charts above, the differences only emerge in the counties at the very top or bottom of a demographic characteristic. A more granular level of analysis, perhaps at the municipal or zip-code level, would potentially allow for a more robust and refined understanding of the role of demographic factors in local news ecosystems.
Additionally, because our methods relied heavily on existing databases and datasets of local media, we know that our list of news media in the state is likely incomplete. Future research could also use methods such as survey or community listening to surface news sources that are not readily available through databases or online searches. Not only can such methods help identify sources not in existing databases, but such approaches also would be instrumental in identifying which demographic and cultural communities are served by existing news media and which are not.
Finally, future research should incorporate a broader view of news media, focused less on legacy media and more on the broader field of civic media. Civic media “delivers civic information, a necessary ingredient for responsive and effective democratic systems” and is an ecosystem consisting of practitioners, including journalists, but also including organizers, educators, product and platform facilitators, and networks across these components.
In addition to understanding the relationship between legacy news media and broader civic information ecosystems, attention should be given to the broader civic information ecosystem across the demographic categories examined in this analysis. Specifically, such research should focus on how to build and sustain civic information ecosystems not only in the face of legacy media decline but among the communities that face the most significant disparities in local news provision.