Dr. Michelle Ferrier | Principal Investigator, Project Creator- Dr. Ferrier is the associate dean for innovation for Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication. Dr. Michelle Ferrier is the principal investigator for and founder of The Media Deserts Project. Conceived in 2010, The Media Deserts Project examines the changing media ecosystem using geographic information system technologies along with digital ethnography and content analyses. This combined approach maps changes to the ZIP code level and provides community-based detail about media conditions.
Ferrier has received grant funding for a hyperlocal online news project, convened sponsored regional and national conferences around media entrepreneurship and community needs, and participated with a national team of researchers responding to the FCC research requests on community information needs. She can be reached at ferrierm(at)ohio(dot)edu.
Dr. Gaurav Sinha | Associate Professor, Geography- Dr. Sinha is an associate professor of Geography, College of Arts and Sciences. He teaches courses in the multidisciplinary field of geographic information science and systems. His research focuses primarily on landscape cognition and the design of ontology driven geographic information systems for landscape information retrieval and analysis.
Bill Reader | Associate Professor, Journalism — Prof. Reader is an associate professor in the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, where he has taught since 2002. His areas of expertise include community journalism, professional ethics in journalism, audience feedback, newspaper and online journalism, and news editing. He is the author most recently of Audience Feedback in the News Media (2015, Routledge) and also is co-author with John Hatcher of Foundations of Community Journalism (2012, Sage).
Former team members include: Ohio University graduate students Zachary Lloyd and Michael Outrich. In past years, she has worked with Dr. Ali Erkan, associate professor, Department of Computer Science and Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College. Both Ferrier and Erkan participated in a National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Computing Workshop in April 2011 that examined such intercollegiate collaborations. She also worked with Dr. Ryan Kirk at Elon University and with Elon University students in the School of Communications to develop the North Carolina prototype for the project.
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