Community Information Needs: A Theory and Methodological Framework

Abstract

In the mass media age, mass communication researchers interested in civic engagement and participation focused primarily on media and media use. However, given the upending of traditional media institutions and the rise of social media and other digital communication technologies that are giving rise to new sources of information, the contemporary media environment calls for a focus on information received from media (and non-media sources), and whether that information meets communities’ information needs. This article unifies different theoretical traditions into a definition of community information needs and a model of community information needs, information seeking and processing, and civic engagement, which can begin to guide theoretically grounded need assessments. The community information seeking and processing model proposed also requires a fresh look at methodological traditions; community-based participatory (CBPR) research is suggested as a possible framework to follow. The CBPR framework capitalizes on the unique scholarly and professional strengths of the mass communication discipline not only to assess information needs but also to help fulfill those needs and study the community-level effects of a robust information environment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank colleagues Daniel Riffe and Rebekah Nagler for helpful feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

¹See Baker (2001) for a taxonomy of different normative theories and their relationships to different conceptions of democracy.

²For a broader discussion of urban communication, see Jeffres (2002).

³In proposing this model, we are also taking a position in a long-standing debate about the “realness” of information carried through media. Although we do not argue that media, particularly news media, have been involved in producing a social construction of communities through their content—in the way Carey (1992) suggested with the ritual view of communication—we agree with Schudson (2008) that this social construction is not completely ephemeral but is built out of a real “something.” For Schudson, that “something” was events. For this model of information needs, we define the real “something” as the more concrete types of information usually found in media.

⁴This model is theorized for U.S. communities in general and may be effected by community size and composition, much as news content has been to shown to vary based on these characteristics (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1980). Communities in our model can vary infinitely in size and pluralism (so long as the community is focused on a common issue). It is reasonable to assume, however, that as the structural pluralism literature suggests, the larger and more pluralistic community, the more reliant the community is on institutional sources of information (Demers, 1994a, 1994b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brendan R. Watson

Brendan R. Watson (Ph.D., North Carolina) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His research interests include community information needs, how digital technologies including social and mobile media are/are not changing communicaiton about public affairs issues, and quantitative communication research methods. More about his research is available at http://brendanwatson.net.

Sarah Cavanah

Sarah Cavanah is a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her research interests include community news and information and scholastic journalism.