CCM Research

The Center for Community Media will produce significant research about media sectors both owned by people of color and that cover communities of color and immigrant communities across the country.

The goal of this research is to fill the data gap and make the findings publicly available. Our research topics will center on critical issues such as sustainability and capacity building, as community news outlets face unprecedented financial uncertainty.

Making Local Elections Count

During the 2021 primary election, CCM piloted the City Elections Initiative, to support New York City community media in accessing their fair share of election-related advertising dollars, and to deepen their coverage of local elections. Our analysis of CFB data shows that political campaigns spent at least $1.53 million on community media between January and June 2021, much of it within a two-to-three month window. CEI supported community media publishers in building relationships with advertisers and key decisionmakers in political campaigns, enabling many of them to access more political ad dollars than ever before, or for the first time.

Through the inaugural City Elections Reporting Fellowship, CEI helped community media publish 120 in-depth stories and explainers in nine languages on local elections. The initiative offers a replicable toolkit for supporting community media during local elections in cities and towns across the country. Read our report, Making Local Elections Count, published in October 2021 here.

Why Black Media Matters Now

In October 2021, CCM released our original content analysis report of coverage published in nearly 100 Black media outlets during 15 critical months, between March 2020 and May 2021. Conducted in partnership with Media Cloud, the report, Why Black Media Matters Now, found that Black media covered the issues that matter most to Black audiences as much as six times more than mainstream media.

As the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately claimed Black lives, protests against police violence spread the country, and during a contentious election year, Black media covered racism, access to voting, and health concerns at the top of Black communities’ minds earlier, more often, and in greater depth than mainstream outlets. They centered Black communities in their coverage, quoting Black people and experts more often than mainstream media did, and contextualized their coverage with links to historic events, wider societal issues, and Black majority countries worldwide. Read the report here.

Asian Media On the Front Lines: How Community Media for and by AAPI Navigated COVID-19, Hate Crimes, and Disinformation

The COVID-19 pandemic claimed more than 19,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander lives, and unleashed a crisis of anti-Asian violence on communities across the U.S. In May 2021, CCM published a special report, Asian Media on the Front Lines, showing how media for and by AAPI responded to converging crises of the pandemic, hate crimes, political polarization, and disinformation throughout the year. It offers a rare glimpse at the dynamic and rapidly evolving Asian community media landscape, and concludes with a look at emerging trends in Asian community media, as legacy print outlets expand into digital platforms and new outlets proliferate to serve the vast, diverse, and rapidly growing AAPI news audiences. Read the report here.

Many Voices, One City

The Many Voices, One City media directory features in-depth information about the more than 270 community publications in the New York metropolitan region.

Mapping Black Media Outlets

In December 2020, we released an interactive map and directory of hundreds of U.S. media outlets primarily serving Black communities across the diaspora. They include newspapers, digital startups that cover niche topics, radio stations, nonprofit newsrooms and more.

Border Network on the Map

We launched an interactive map and directory in September 2020 of more than 50 media outlets along the U.S.-Mexico border. The outlets range from local newspapers and decades-old community radio stations to innovative digital news services and new multimedia platforms.

The News Agenda of Latino Media in the U.S.

The News Agenda of Latino Media in the U.S. report, released in August 2020 and available in Spanish and English, analyzes 667,247 news stories in 41 outlets from the Spanish-language media in the U.S. These articles, which span the first three years of the Trump administration, were collected by the monitoring and analysis tool Media Cloud. The research examines how the media sector covered issues of interest to Latinos and how the outlets portrayed immigrants, as well as other topics including the use of particular terms by the media and differences between coverage by local and national outlets.

This report is the second phase of The State of Latino News Media, an analysis published in June 2019 that gave an initial snapshot of the Spanish-language media in the U.S. and included a directory and map.

Digital First Responders: How Innovative News Outlets are Meeting the Needs of Immigrant Communities

In June 2020, CCM released “Digital First Responders: How Innovative News Outlets are Meeting the Needs of Immigrant Communities,” a yearlong study of media organizations that use technological platforms to inform their communities and diversify their means of sustainability. The 50 outlets in the database – 17 of which are profiled in-depth – serve audiences from indigenous farmworkers to Punjabi truck drivers. They livestream protests on Facebook, quash disinformation on WeChat, broadcast to an international audience from a home basement, and field pandemic questions in four languages.

These outlets not only play a crucial public service role for immigrants, they tell the stories of communities rarely covered in the so-called mainstream media while also serving as models of growth and innovation.

The State of Latino News Media

In June 2019 “The State of Latino News Media” was published.

This pioneering research includes a map and analysis of the news media outlets serving the Latino population in the United States including Puerto Rico. The report includes a directory and first-of-a-kind, interactive map of more than 600 Latino news media outlets. The map remains a critical asset for the public by providing free access to data on Latino news outlets across the country.

The next steps in CCM’s research will encompass studies on media outlets serving Black and immigrant communities across the United States.

New York City’s Ethnic Media in the Digital Age

On Dec. 8, 2016, the Center released a study about the opportunities and challenges that publishing in the digital age has presented to New York City’s “ethnic” media.

The report offers a detailed look at how this sector of the NYC media is adopting technological innovations, incorporating new communication technologies into everyday professional practices, and how to address these challenges from these innovations successfully.

Getting the Word Out Or Not: How and Where New York City Advertises

Our first significant research piece was a 2013 report by the Center which found that New York City government agencies spent a mere 18 percent of their advertising dollars with community publications whose combined circulation was about 4.5 million, or 55 percent of the city’s population. 

CCM will be reviewing more updated data to understand how city advertising in community media has evolved since the 2013 report was issued.