From news deserts to news resilience: Analysis of media in depopulated areas

Abstract

This article delves into the established concept of news deserts within the broader field of Communication Geography, aiming to propose a comprehensive methodological framework for exploring the absence of local media. This approach considers crucial variables including geography, demography, public services, and infrastructure, all contributing to the configuration of the media landscape. By focusing on the depopulated region of Castile-La Mancha in Spain, we examine the relationship between the presence (or lack) of media outlets and factors such as population density, average per capita income, business activity, public service availability, accessibility, and other pertinent elements. Our analysis reveals that the media structure mirrors demographic and concentration patterns, primarily favoring central areas while leaving peripheral areas virtually isolated. This is despite the fact that the majority of the region has public services such as libraries, health centers, and telecommunications infrastructure. Income and business activity do not seem to correlate with a greater media presence. These findings underscore the necessity for sub-national studies with a specific focus on rural environments, accounting for territorial diversity, in order to better understand what occurs happens in areas considered to be news deserts.

“News Desertification” in Europe: Highlighting Correlations for Future Research

“…Naturally, at this nascent stage of analysis, there is a myriad of methodological refinements that are still required to enable us to have a more granular and comprehensive understanding of the factors that might be driving news desertification or, vice versa, what might be the ramifications of news desertification for the wider information ecosystem. In particular, it is necessary to identify and control for potential confounders, such as inter alia, economic performance including average per capita income (Saiz-Echezarreta et al 2023), democratic performance (the EIU Democracy Index), the Corruption Perceptions Index, education and media literacy levels, levels of trust in the traditional media and public institutions, and demographic trends (Negreira-Rey et al 2023), which can also be reasonably expected to be correlated with both the independent and dependent variables of our analysis. In practical terms, we wish to develop a multiple linear regression model to better understand the interplay between these variables in addition to adding other contextual factors that were overlooked in this paper.…”