About the Civic Information Index
The Civic Information Index focuses efforts to revitalize local news on the core purpose of journalism: “to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.”
(Kovach & Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism.)
Centering on this notion — that the core purpose of news media is to strengthen civic health — the Index combines 21 publicly available, county-level datasets to assess the strength of a community’s civic health. It combines data on elements of civic health such as volunteer rates, library visits, housing insecurity and medical debt, enabling media entrepreneurs and information providers to engage and collaborate with their audiences and communities through a renewed emphasis on the outcomes journalists and other civic health actors hope to achieve.
In connecting the dots among the diverse factors that drive civic health, the Civic Information Index highlights how journalism and information ecosystems are a critical part of the civic infrastructure serving people and communities.
“The reason I'm excited about this work is that we’ve been in a reactionary frame in terms of how to talk about our work. This project creates a proactive framework for discussions about what impact looks like and what we are all working towards as a collective.”
Mazin Sidahmed,
Co-Executive Director, Documented
Why an Index?
In a nutshell, an index is a way to measure things. Built on a conceptual framework that clarifies what outcomes are of interest and why, an index maps out what data is and is not available and then uses the existing data to measure the outcomes of interest. By uniquely combining diverse data to assess civic health outcomes at the county level across the United States, the Civic Information Index allows us to see trends, outliers and reinforcing factors that drive civic health. While each data set in the Index represents facts, it is important to note that the Index itself is a product of many value-based decisions, determining, for example, what factors to include and what data sets to use to measure them.
“I think this project is powerful because it brings together diverse data sets and visualizes them in a way that highlights opportunities for improving civic health. It's a comprehensive approach that can guide us in making impactful changes.”
Amanda Zamora,
Co-Founder, The 19th
Where the Index data is coming from
All data in this Index has been downloaded from publicly available data sets. This includes commonly known data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Education, the IRS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Urban Institute and Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. It also includes more unique datasets such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services Public Libraries Survey or the number of Facebook Pages predicted to be “Public Good” pages as collected by Opportunity Insights. (A detailed list of all indicators and their data sources is available in Explore the Index.)
How the Index defines key terms (Glossary)
Civic Health: Civic health is the overall wellbeing of communities and how people participate in them.
Civic Infrastructure: The places, policies, programs and practices that support civic health. From public parks to voter registration laws to newsrooms, civic infrastructure is a key facilitator of civic health.
Civic Information: Any form of communication that is vital for people to make crucial decisions about their lives, that strengthens the social bonds within a community, and that creates a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents.
Civic Life: The public life of citizens concerned with the affairs of the community and nation.
Civic Media: Techniques and organizations that generate and share civic information in democratic societies. Civic media can include traditional newsrooms focused on local reporting as well as journalism start-ups building community power and citizen-run initiatives focused, for example, on connecting people with resources and opportunities.
Community Power Building: A set of strategies to develop, sustain and grow an organized base of people to advance community-led goals. In Community Power Building, people act together through democratic structures to set agendas, shift public discourse, influence decisions and cultivate ongoing relationships of mutual accountability with decision-makers.
Information Ecosystem: A complex network of individuals, organizations, technologies, and practices that interact to create, share, and consume information, often compared to biological ecosystems due to information ecosystems’ complex, interconnected and dynamic nature. An information ecosystem includes word of mouth, trusted community leaders, local media, local authorities, social media and/or other “infomediaries” as well as channels, formats and behaviors that drive highly participatory, distributed information flows.
Index: A way of looking at or combining different data sets to measure an outcome in a standardized way.
How we created the Index
The project started with two essential questions: What, exactly, drives civic health? And what is the role that news and information play in the larger civic health ecosystem?
We explored these questions and developed the conceptual framework and design of the Index in an intense four-month process that included: multiple working sessions and asynchronous engagement of a curated Advisory Group of experts in the fields of journalism and civic engagement; interviews with other experts and diverse stakeholders; and a thorough review of existing literature, evidence and approaches. (See Explore the Index for details on the Index methodology and data sources).
“Our discussions underscore a critical point: the interplay between journalism and community engagement is pivotal.”
Andrea Wenzel, Associate Professor of Journalism, Temple University
The Index Advisory Group
Kali-Ahset Amen, Executive Director, Center for Journalism & Democracy, Howard University
Madeleine Bair, Founding Director, El Tímpano
Paulette Brown-Hinds, Founder, Voice Media Ventures and publisher of Black Voice News
Matt Leighninger, Director, Center for Democracy Innovation, National Civic League
Sema Sgaier, Co-Founder and CEO, Surgo Ventures
Mazin Sidahmed, Co-Executive Director, Documented
Loris A. Taylor, President & CEO, Native Public Media
Andrea Wenzel, Associate Professor of Journalism, Temple University
Amanda Zamora, Founder, Agencia Media; Co-Founder, The 19th; Independent Consultant
Listening Post Collective team members:
Dale Anglin, Director
Christina Shih, Associate Director
The Index Team
Stefanie Friedhoff, Co-Founder and Director, Information Futures Lab
Jesse Hardman, Founder, Listening Post Collective
Listening Post Collective team members:
Carolyn Powers, Director of US Programs, Internews
Grace Northern, Program Officer
Emilia López León, Graphic Design Officer
Andrea Mondragón, Illustrator
Information Futures Lab team members:
Irene Papanicolas, Director of the Center for Health System Sustainability, Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice, Brown University
Claire Wardle, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Cornell University
Benjy Renton, Research Associate
Liz Gallagher, Research Assistant
Maecey Niksch, Research Assistant
Tania Sawaya, Research Assistant
About the Information Futures Lab
Founded in 2022, the Information Futures Lab at Brown University is a new type of university hub. Interdisciplinary researchers work alongside organizations, journalists, civic society leaders and other sources of trusted information to respond to the information crisis as a civic and public health threat. Recognizing information as a social determinant of health, we create an evidence base and work with our partners to improve information ecosystems and strengthen the capacity of citizens to effectively access, create and make sense of information that is crucial to their wellbeing.
About the Listening Post Collective
The Listening Post Collective was established in 2013 by Jesse Hardman to adapt Internews’s global expertise in community information mapping for the U.S. Through innovative strategies, the Listening Post Collective helps local media and community organizations address information gaps and empower underserved communities. The Listening Post Collective’s work demonstrates the power of community engagement in creating impactful, local journalism. We provide a proven framework to build resilient information ecosystems that directly serve community needs.
About Press Forward
Press Forward is a national coalition investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and to scale the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive.