Geographical Locations of News Deserts and Factors that Influence Exit of Local Newspapers

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Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

Flora Yao
Flora Yao

Flora Yao is a rising sophomore (’23) at Wes, intended to be an Economics major. She came from China and went to an International Curriculum there. As a former debater for 3 years, she had traveled many different cities in China. Now in Wesleyan, she is part of the Cheerleading team. Flora is also a huge fan of sudoku and puzzle. Starting from 5 years old, she has been playing the piano for 13 years. She plans to use her four years at Wes to explore many different areas.

Abstract: The problem of “news deserts” — places where there is no traditional news outlet like a newspaper or local radio or TV — is a challenge in the current media environment. One little-studied aspect of this problem is that news consumers can use alternative Internet media in place of the previous news sources. Examples of alternatives for local news include the websites of town governments, school districts, school boards, and political officials. This project ultimately seeks to examine the web browsing behavior or people who live in news deserts to see whether they do in fact increase their browsing of these alternative information sources. The primary work of this project is to go through the list of newspapers and other local news entities that have exited the market and determine geographically where the outlet was located, when the exit occurred, and whether the exit simply resulted in a domain name change as would be the case where one newspaper acquires another. The project also examines whether there is a geographical trend on exits and what factors could potentially influence the exits of news outlets from local areas.

Flora_QAC2020_Poster-Flora-Yao

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

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