News Media Ecosystems and Population Dynamics: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

Much of the classic sociological research on news production was conducted at the level of the news organization (e.g. Epstein, 1973; Tuchman, 1978; Tunstall, 1971). However, for some time, scholars have also recognized that news organizations are porous, and news is influenced by the organization’s environment (e.g. Carroll and Hannan, 1995; Tichenor, Olien and Donohue, 1980). In the early to mid-1900s, Robert Park of the Chicago School of Sociology mapped urban ecologies, studying the relationship between news media readership, community complexity, and community integration (Janowitz, 1967; Park, 1922). Research on the role of news media in complex ecosystems continued with Tichenor, Olien and Donohue (e.g. 1980), Jeffres and colleagues (e.g. 2000); Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006); and McLeod and colleagues (e.g. 1999), among others. Within the last few years, studies of changing urban news ecosystems and ecologies in the midst of economic, technological and cultural disruption have been common (e.g. Anderson, 2013; Chicago Community Trust, 2011; Robinson, 2011).