NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region, North Slave Region

Tags: communication, journalism

Objective(s): To describe, understand, and interpret the information ecosystems in rural areas.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5632. For the fieldwork proposed by this ethics application, the research question is: "What is the information ecology in Canadian communities served (and not served) by professional journalism?" The immediate goal of the proposed research is to describe, understand, and interpret the information ecosystems in rural areas. The greater objective of the research is to contribute to our knowledge on how people use information (journalistic and non-journalistic) in their daily lives. Penelope Abernathy (2018) was one of the first to describe news deserts. News deserts may emerge when local news media outlets close, or when local news media outlets are merged to create regional publications that share reporters (or more often, a single reporter) among several (often widely separated) communities. A subsidiary research question is "How did local journalism happen during the wildfires of 2023?" The objective of this line of inquiry is to clarify how reporting was able to occur when communities were evacuated. For the North West Territories portion of the research, the methodology will be limited to semistructured interviews and observation of journalists and other news workers at media outlets in the Yellowknife and Hay River communities. It is anticipated that between 6 and 15 participants in total. The study participants will be offered summary reports and full text of research outputs. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: April 16 - December 31, 2024