The Civic Information Observatory is a research firm dedicated to providing visibility into civic news and information landscapes. This includes mapping local news ecosystems, research related to media policy, conducting impact analysis, and understanding and fostering collaboration.
Mapping local news ecosystems
Mapping local news ecosystems involves identifying providers of local news and civic information, highlighting trusted messengers, and understanding how audiences consume the news and information those suppliers provide. We do this using rigorous social scientific methods, the latest advances in AI, and deep communication with funders and communities.
Our media policy research includes understanding the contexts in which media policy is more or less likely to be successful, charting the changes made possible by new policies, and analyzing impact across policy contexts to improve future iterations.
All interventions – be they from media policies, new funding, or by a newsroom or nonprofit – are meant to create change. Yet documenting that change is incredibly complicated, for myriad reasons. Doing it well requires deep knowledge of the field in which players are operating, and of the players themselves.
Journalistic collaboration (between two news organizations) and cross-field collaboration (between a news org and a civil society organization) are increasingly common. Part of the reason they have become accepted practice is because their prevalence has been documented and analyzed for best practices, which we've been doing since 2017.
The Civic Information Observatory’s research is premised on a central goal: being useful to people in the field who need answers to their questions, big and small. Whether a journalism support organization who needs to track their impact, a publisher who wants to better understand the audience they serve, or a funder who wants a systematic analysis of a local news landscape – our research aims to help the field move forward.
Led by Sarah Stonbely, PhD, our team brings expertise from journalism, computer science, cartography, AI, and a range of other disciplines to produce insights into the rapidly changing world of journalism and beyond. See Research for examples of our work.
