Irwin ChenResearch / Journalism Ecosystem Model

Journalism Ecosystem Model

2020

In 2020, in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Heather Chaplin and I commissioned Francis Tseng, an Independent Researcher at the Jain Family Institute, to create an interactive model that tried to capture some of the dynamics that we were seeing play out specifically with regard to local journalism. We eventually focused on how certain factors such as population density, social media platform usage, ownership, and subscribership influenced the development of news deserts. We worked closely with Tseng to define the parameters of the model and proposed further enhancements of the UI.



Proposed Model UI



The project was suspended due to lack of funding but we are continuing to experiment with the model in light of new developments and data.