Statement on School of Journalism and Mass Communication involvement in Critical Information Needs Study

The Federal Communications Commission will amend its Critical Information Needs (CIN) pilot study in Columbia, S.C., after concerns were expressed that some of the questions were inappropriate and improperly directed at media owners and journalists.

As part of the discussion, there has been interest in the role of the Center for Communication and Democracy, housed in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The center participated in completing a literature review for the FCC, which provided information used in designing the study.

Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor Lewis Friedland, director of the center, is the lead author of a 2012 study commissioned by the FCC whose full title is “Review of the Literature Regarding Critical Information Needs of the American Public.”

Its co-authors also include Carola Weil of the USC Annenberg School, Ernest Wilson (now at American University), Phil Napoli of Rutgers, and Katya Ogyanova, a USC grad student at the time.

It was an examination of roughly 1,000 pieces of literature in the fields of communication, urban planning, economics, health, the environment, political science and other allied fields concerning the information needs of Americans. In the end, roughly 500 articles were included in the review. (The study did not seek or receive human subjects approval because it reviewed only articles and did not include human subjects.)

The study concluded that the rapidly changing information environment in the U.S. opens new opportunities but also creates potential new problems and barriers in the meeting of local community information needs. It recommended a broader study of local community information environments.

The study was vetted by a broad panel of scholars at the FCC itself, as well as by representatives of industry including but not limited to representatives of the National Association of Broadcasters, the telecommunications industries, and others.

UW’s Center for Communications and Democracy received $20,000 for the work from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at USC, to which it was a subcontractor. The sum represented the majority of its recent research funding.

The FCC decided to conduct a pilot study based on the recommendations. Friedland was a consultant to SSI, a Washington, D.C. firm that was contracted by the FCC to design the study itself. He subsequently received $6,000 from SSI.