Mapping Change in Canada’s Local News Landscape: An Investigation of Research Impact on Public Policy

This study investigates whether the Local News Map, a crowdsourced digital tool that tracks changes to local news outlets, influenced policy making that resulted in new government supports for Canadian journalism. It demonstrates how scholarly research informs government decision making and identifies a more nuanced approach to tracking research impact at a time when funders are increasingly demanding evidence that research dollars are well spent. We argue that research knowledge is used for various purposes at different points in policy making and that its impact should not just be assessed in terms of influence on a final outcome. Using a mixed-methods approach to chronicle opportunities for research influence, we found that map data were incorporated into news and social media content that helped push the news industry’s problems onto the government’s policy-making agenda. The data were also used by officials to understand what is happening to local newsrooms and to develop a policy rationale for government aid. The results suggest that when impact is defined as situations where scholarly knowledge raises consciousness of an issue, informs thinking or leads to the application of that knowledge, the result is a more realistic assessment of research impact on the policy process.