CUNY Community Media Explorations

Media Cloud has partnered with the City University of New York’s Center for Community Media on several different media analysis projects in recent years, producing insightful and relevant findings on community-level media ecosystems. Most recently, the partnership explored key coverage areas for community media in the state of New York, analyzing publications from a directory assembled by CCM. Differences between New York City-area publications and publications from elsewhere in the state were noted, in a report that is forthcoming. 

A previous collaboration between Media Cloud and CCM focused on Black media, using Media Cloud to analyze Black media publications at scale, and differences in attention to various topics and language and frames used between Black media and mainstream media. The resulting report, Why Black Media Matters Now, has been used to catalyze advocacy and funding for the Black press, which the data shows serves an important role in contextualizing current stories within the arc of history. 

Media Cloud also supported CCM in a third analysis, The State of Latino News Media. This important bilingual research effort used Media Cloud to understand the subjects of news published by and for Latino communities in the US, and highlighted potential areas where coverage is inadequate or fertile ground for mis/disinformation.