Paladhi examines predictions of U.S. news deserts in new publication
Doctoral candidate Arijit Paladhi published “Predicting news deserts using supervised machine learning” in the Journal of Computational Social Science on March 4.
The article looks at how the decline of local newspapers has led to the emergence of news deserts that pose a threat to community engagement and democracy. Paladhi’s study aimed to predict which U.S. counties are most at risk of becoming news deserts by developing machine learning models based on socioeconomic, geographic, and circulation data.
Results of the study provided valuable insights for policymakers aiming to develop targeted interventions to preserve local media ecosystems and strengthen democratic processes.