For most of my career, I have studied how journalists decide what is news--focusing particularly on the technological, economic, and cultural factors that impact news production in elite national and international news organizations. Increasingly, I am focused on blending insights from political communication and platform studies with what I know about the tremendous challenges facing the local news industry in the US-- and what this means for civic life, particularly in historically marginalized communities. While I am an ethnographer and specialize in qualitative methods, I also work to combine insights from big data, computational analysis, and quantitative methods in my work. Below, you can find more about my current and past projects.
1) Place, Politics, and Inequality in Journalism
Through my newest book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism, I show how journalists are growing increasingly economically, culturally, socially, and geographically distant from the people and places they cover. Drawing on more than a decade of research, I offer a data-driven argument that the news that feeds democratic life will increasingly be for and by elites, leaving many Americans without meaningful access to local news and information. Race and class are major sub-themes this work, and I critique the normative premise that journalism and democracy go hand and hand, throwing some cold water on the fantasy (see my post-2020 thoughts, for example). I show that current efforts to "fix" journalism are overly focused on false nostalgia for newspapers and raise concerns that non-profit interventions may re-inscribe existing inequities. My solutions aren't ones you've heard before (Fix work study? Have the Democrats fund local news? Forget about "saving" local newspapers entirely?...and others).
While I'm moving beyond this project, the research associated with this work has generally examined how journalists are shaped by places and shape places through their journalism. I have looked at news buildings, virtual work, the rise of national news organizations, mapping, the decline of local journalism, and global digital expansions, and beyond. Some early work previews can be seen in my Tow Center Report, this Poynter post, and this journal article on The Miami Herald. Associated projects look at other dimensions of place, from materiality and objects of journalism to the role of time in journalism to changing labor conditions for journalists and other newsworkers. For my fancy theoretical take on place in journalism, see this 30k word monograph.
2) Platforms as Critical Civic Communication Infrastructure
What happens when Facebook becomes the front page, home page, and community bulletin board for civic information in rural communities? Through the research team Platforms, Politics, and Local News in Illinois, or PPLN-IL, we consider what happens when communities in diminished legacy local news environments turn to digital platforms like Facebook to fill critical communication and information needs. We’re particularly concerned about misinformation and hyper-partisanship in local communities. Illinois is our main focus thus far—it is not only where we live and the state we work for, but it is also “the most average” state in the country, typifying demographic, political, cultural and economic trends (and tensions) that play out across the US. We are interested in how local community information environments (sometimes called communication infrastructures) might be impacted by structural inequality, rurality, religion, race, and partisanship -- and we are particularly interested in how political parties, community-based organizations/public services, and community residents themselves seek out, share, and create civic information. Our earliest projects have focused on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation at the local/county level and we are getting a broad-based understanding of how people use platforms to talk about politics, news, and their communities. The Open Markets Institute's Knight-funded Center for Journalism and Liberty has given us some start-up funding, but we're looking to expand and grow this support so we can continue to do this work. We are an interdisciplinary team and use a wide variety of methods (qualitative, quantitative, computational) to look at the challenges facing a post-newspaper community information environment. I gave an early talk for our Center for Advanced Studies about some of my research that you can watch here.
Other work:
1) Post-newspaper democracy
This research considers basic normative assumptions about American democracy from the starting point of communication research. As such, along with colleague Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, we are poking at questions such as the relationship between local news and political corruption, whether declines in local journalism are associated with greater political polarization, and beyond. We bring together novel datasets to augment prevailing public discourse about news deserts, media trust, political knowledge, and political polarization. Ultimately, we consider what a post-newspaper America means for democratic life.
2) The Political Economy of Big Tech, Platform Governance, and Journalism
This line of research considers how Google, Facebook, and other big tech companies undermine the financial solvency and independence of journalism worldwide. Spurred by a fellowship with the Open Markets Institute's Knight-funded Center for Journalism and Liberty, I consider how journalism and big tech intersect, following the trail of money, platform politics, and (lack of) platform governance. Early research suggests that these companies pose dangers to democratic life beyond just misinformation, from data privacy to media capture, funding distressed newsrooms and acquiescing to political demands in a piecemeal and compromised fashion. My research briefing can be found here. This is my most comparative project, and looks to the EU and Australia for insights and failures into regulatory efforts to balance the needs of an independent news media with the power of platforms.
3) The "Power Elite" of Journalism and Politics
This line of research is on hiatus, at least as a matter of personal mental health given our contemporary political environment. Inspired by the beltway versus heartland divide I heard so much about living in Washington, the question I'm interested in is: Who gets to tell the story of America? Why? What hiccups result? Using a multi-method approach that includes qualitative field work, interviewing, and Twitter, LinkedIn and other big data sources for computational and manual analysis, I focus on the national political news media and interrogate questions related to amplification, partisanship, inequity, and representation. These papers have received significant earned media and scholarly engagement. Twitter Makes it Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias received international attention and the open-access Sharing Knowledge and "Microbubbles": Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism was featured on NPR, among other media outlets.
Statement on research ethics
I strive for collaboration and collegial, respectful relationships with my colleagues, research participants, and students. I strive for transparent and open research, from data to methods to modes of publication, as much as possible. I aspire to public-facing, non-partisan analysis. I have not taken financial support for my research from Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any platform company.
1) Place, Politics, and Inequality in Journalism
Through my newest book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism, I show how journalists are growing increasingly economically, culturally, socially, and geographically distant from the people and places they cover. Drawing on more than a decade of research, I offer a data-driven argument that the news that feeds democratic life will increasingly be for and by elites, leaving many Americans without meaningful access to local news and information. Race and class are major sub-themes this work, and I critique the normative premise that journalism and democracy go hand and hand, throwing some cold water on the fantasy (see my post-2020 thoughts, for example). I show that current efforts to "fix" journalism are overly focused on false nostalgia for newspapers and raise concerns that non-profit interventions may re-inscribe existing inequities. My solutions aren't ones you've heard before (Fix work study? Have the Democrats fund local news? Forget about "saving" local newspapers entirely?...and others).
While I'm moving beyond this project, the research associated with this work has generally examined how journalists are shaped by places and shape places through their journalism. I have looked at news buildings, virtual work, the rise of national news organizations, mapping, the decline of local journalism, and global digital expansions, and beyond. Some early work previews can be seen in my Tow Center Report, this Poynter post, and this journal article on The Miami Herald. Associated projects look at other dimensions of place, from materiality and objects of journalism to the role of time in journalism to changing labor conditions for journalists and other newsworkers. For my fancy theoretical take on place in journalism, see this 30k word monograph.
2) Platforms as Critical Civic Communication Infrastructure
What happens when Facebook becomes the front page, home page, and community bulletin board for civic information in rural communities? Through the research team Platforms, Politics, and Local News in Illinois, or PPLN-IL, we consider what happens when communities in diminished legacy local news environments turn to digital platforms like Facebook to fill critical communication and information needs. We’re particularly concerned about misinformation and hyper-partisanship in local communities. Illinois is our main focus thus far—it is not only where we live and the state we work for, but it is also “the most average” state in the country, typifying demographic, political, cultural and economic trends (and tensions) that play out across the US. We are interested in how local community information environments (sometimes called communication infrastructures) might be impacted by structural inequality, rurality, religion, race, and partisanship -- and we are particularly interested in how political parties, community-based organizations/public services, and community residents themselves seek out, share, and create civic information. Our earliest projects have focused on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation at the local/county level and we are getting a broad-based understanding of how people use platforms to talk about politics, news, and their communities. The Open Markets Institute's Knight-funded Center for Journalism and Liberty has given us some start-up funding, but we're looking to expand and grow this support so we can continue to do this work. We are an interdisciplinary team and use a wide variety of methods (qualitative, quantitative, computational) to look at the challenges facing a post-newspaper community information environment. I gave an early talk for our Center for Advanced Studies about some of my research that you can watch here.
Other work:
1) Post-newspaper democracy
This research considers basic normative assumptions about American democracy from the starting point of communication research. As such, along with colleague Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, we are poking at questions such as the relationship between local news and political corruption, whether declines in local journalism are associated with greater political polarization, and beyond. We bring together novel datasets to augment prevailing public discourse about news deserts, media trust, political knowledge, and political polarization. Ultimately, we consider what a post-newspaper America means for democratic life.
2) The Political Economy of Big Tech, Platform Governance, and Journalism
This line of research considers how Google, Facebook, and other big tech companies undermine the financial solvency and independence of journalism worldwide. Spurred by a fellowship with the Open Markets Institute's Knight-funded Center for Journalism and Liberty, I consider how journalism and big tech intersect, following the trail of money, platform politics, and (lack of) platform governance. Early research suggests that these companies pose dangers to democratic life beyond just misinformation, from data privacy to media capture, funding distressed newsrooms and acquiescing to political demands in a piecemeal and compromised fashion. My research briefing can be found here. This is my most comparative project, and looks to the EU and Australia for insights and failures into regulatory efforts to balance the needs of an independent news media with the power of platforms.
3) The "Power Elite" of Journalism and Politics
This line of research is on hiatus, at least as a matter of personal mental health given our contemporary political environment. Inspired by the beltway versus heartland divide I heard so much about living in Washington, the question I'm interested in is: Who gets to tell the story of America? Why? What hiccups result? Using a multi-method approach that includes qualitative field work, interviewing, and Twitter, LinkedIn and other big data sources for computational and manual analysis, I focus on the national political news media and interrogate questions related to amplification, partisanship, inequity, and representation. These papers have received significant earned media and scholarly engagement. Twitter Makes it Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias received international attention and the open-access Sharing Knowledge and "Microbubbles": Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism was featured on NPR, among other media outlets.
Statement on research ethics
I strive for collaboration and collegial, respectful relationships with my colleagues, research participants, and students. I strive for transparent and open research, from data to methods to modes of publication, as much as possible. I aspire to public-facing, non-partisan analysis. I have not taken financial support for my research from Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any platform company.
