Norman Lear Center Receives Grant for Media Study Project
A new research project was added to the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center on Monday.
Thanks to donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the center will receive $3.25 million in funding over the next two years.
The grants will be used to help a program called the "Media Impact Project" that will research and measure the impact of news and media on people. The current methods used to assess audience engagement are outdated, and don't best reveal how news affects social trends and individual behavior, according to the press release from the Lear Center.
The press release said the program will be "geared to developing and curating new tools and best practices in media metrics, and acting as a global hub to foster innovation and thought leadership in this field."
To accomplish this, the center is putting together an interdisciplinary team of researchers including journalists, behavioral scientists, and analytics experts.
Martin Kaplan, director of the Lear Center, will be the principal investigator on the project along with Johanna Blakley who will serve as the project's co-principal investigator.
The project will take seven specific action steps:
1. "Building an institution" that will be recognized as an official source of audience engagement research.
2. "Collecting best practices" for how media impact should be studied.
3. Creating a new "data analytics center" to process, aggregate, and share data.
4. "Providing technical assistance" to media projects.
5. "Evaluating impact" of how the research helps specific media projects.
6. "Overseeing Evaluations" of all findings.
7. "Convening the metrics community" to discuss the future path of media impact studies.
The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism is excited to receive the investment.
"We're delighted that Gates and Knight have recognized the Lear Center as a leader, and the Annenberg School as a center of excellence, in measuring media engagement and impact," said Dean Ernest L. Wilson III.
