Internews Information Ecosystem Assessments

"The ways in which people consume, produce, contribute to, interact with, and behave around information are what makes information ecosystems dynamic and diverse."

This collection of Information Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) produced by Internews seeks to create a deeper understanding of how people find, share, value, and trust information coming from the media and other more informal personal and community channels. Their objective is to inform Internews' approach to designing contextual programming that addresses information gaps, fosters greater information literacy, and supports the development of media outlets and journalists around the world. Countries covered include, for example, Tunisia, Sudan, Mali, Columbia, Barbados and Dominica, Haiti, Malaysia, Philippines, Bolivia, Georgia, and the United States (with a focus on California).

Using a human-centred approach and taking into consideration the diverse and dynamic nature of information ecosystems, the IEAs seek to map both sides of the relationship between information supply and demand:

•  To analyse the information supply, the IEAs capture the reach, content, quantity, quality, and capacity of the media available in the country or locality in focus, as well as the business, legal, and regulatory environment in which media outlets operate.
• To analyse information demand, the IEA process partners with communities to conduct field research on the information needs, access, sourcing, trust, influence, sharing, and literacy of community members through a human-centred research approach involving observation, questionnaires, and interviews.

Click here to learn more about Internews' approach to IEAs [2 pages, PDF].