As local journalism grapples with urgent and multilayered crises, it may seem an odd moment to suggest a deeper dive into academic communication theory. However, it is at these very moments when praxis can be most valuable. Theory can offer tools to assess and reimagine taken for granted journalism and information practices. One theory that our Center for Community Engaged Media has been drawing on to look at the communication health of communities is Communication Infrastructure Theory or CIT. We have been using CIT in practical ways to better understand how to support communities in getting and making sense of the information they need to be able to participate in civic life. CIT guides how we map media and communication assets and needs, how we assess the strength of local storytelling networks, and how we design and monitor efforts to improve civic media and information access in communities. In hopes that others (not only academics) may find this theory a helpful framework for examining their communities, we offer here some background and an overview of key CIT concepts.
Communication infrastructure theory was developed by Dr. Sandra Ball-Rokeach and members of the Metamorphosis Project at the University of Southern California. As a place-based theory, CIT takes a wholistic multilevel approach that centers communities. As it seeks to understand how to strengthen civic life and communication health, it doesn’t just look at news media. It examines the relationship between communication resources at the macro (e.g. mainstream metro news), meso (e.g. community orgs and community media), and micro (residents’ interpersonal networks) levels—with an emphasis on the meso and micro. The foundational research studies that were used to develop CIT built upon what the Metamorphosis Project called “a total communication environment diagnostic research design” (Ball Rokeach et al., 2001, 395). This included “six interrelated methods of observation”—a telephone survey, focus groups with residents, interviews with community organizations, media content analysis, interviews with media producers, and socio-spatial mapping. Research in the seven focus neighborhoods was conducted in multiple languages.
At the heart of the theory are two core concepts: the storytelling network and the communication action context. In CIT terms, “storytelling” refers to “the act of constructing identity through narrative discourse”. Different actors engage in storytelling about a community beyond news media. In CIT’s storytelling network, actors include community organizations, networks of residents, and local or community media. Participating in storytelling allows residents to discuss community issues and develop a sense of belonging to a shared community—a precondition for civic participation.
This storytelling network is situated within the communication action context—which can be considered more “open” or “closed,” based on “features of their residential environments that enable or constrain their communication behavior” (Ball-Rokeach et al. 2001). For example, limited public transit or safety concerns in the communication action context may make it less likely that people will go to a community meeting where they’d be able to connect to the storytelling network.
CIT offers a vision of an “ideal storytelling system.” A healthy storytelling network is conceptualized as one with broad, deep, and integrated links among the macro, meso, and micro levels of storytelling actors. For example, in a stronger storytelling network, there are more “connective tissues” linking community organizations with residents, or residents with local media. This makes it more likely for those who connect to a network to have a shared awareness of community issues and more opportunities for dialogue to determine what to do about them. CIT researchers have shown how residents connected to neighborhood storytelling networks that are more active and connected report greater levels of belonging to their community (Ball-Rokeach et al. 2001) and higher levels of perceived efficacy and civic participation (Kim and Ball-Rokeach 2006).
CIT has been used by researchers and practitioners in a variety of fields from health communication to journalism studies. This has included assessing local storytelling networks and the communication action context, designing interventions to strengthen them, and monitoring how these impact storytelling networks. In the realm of journalism, CIT researchers have collaborated with practitioners to develop and monitor a tri-lingual hyperlocal digital news site with community contributors (Chen et al 2018), to connect journalists and community organizers to collaborate on a solutions journalism series, and to assess the needs and assets of stigmatized communities and pilot community information hubs. Practitioners, notably City Bureau, have also connected with CIT to help inform their strategic planning—and ripples of these adaptations of the theory continue to be seen in concepts such as Commoner and Press Forward’s information stewards.
For the Center for Community-Engaged Media, we often engage with CIT to inform our approach to assessing the communication health of communities, and collaboratively designing initiatives that seek to strengthen communication infrastructure. This allows us to approach questions about information needs and gaps through a more wholistic and community-centered lens. For example, we do look at the presence or absence of news outlets, local coverage, and the match between the information people say they are seeking and the information being provided. However, we also look at the larger storytelling network beyond local media (e.g. including residents and community organizations)—and we look at how access to the network is or is not supported by the communication action context. This allows us to explore questions beyond information needs, and to try and understand the extent the storytelling network supports needs for connection and belonging, and where storytelling network actors are or are not integrated (for example if there are fissures separating groups along lines of race or politics, or if there are potential bridging spaces where residents may connect across divides). We have also adapted and updated the CIT framework to map community assets that were not widely present in the early days of the theory—such as the role played by social media influencers or newsfluencers, and the role of closed group chats like WhatsApp and Signal that have become critical spaces to share and discuss hyperlocal information. Starting with questions about the health of local storytelling networks also allows us to center communities rather than the journalism industry—and to look critically at journalism norms that have at times detracted from the health of local storytelling networks—for example when dominant interpretations of objectivity have led local reporters and editors to keep a distance from community organizations and networks.
Of course, communication infrastructure theory has and continues to be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways. In the current volatile moment, it can be helpful to bring creativity and flexibility to how theoretical frameworks are applied while seeking to continue to center core questions around how to support more informed and engaged communities. Below are some additional readings that may be of interest, and we’d love to hear from others (researchers and practitioners!) who have been engaging with CIT or other theories with the aims for supporting the civic and communication lives of communities.
Recommended for Further Reading:
Ball-Rokeach, Sandra J., Yong-Chan Kim, and Sorin Matei. (2001). “Storytelling Neighborhood: Paths to Belonging in Diverse Urban Environments.” Communication Research 28(4):392-428
Kim, Yong-Chan, and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach. (2006) “Civic Engagement from a Communication Infrastructure Perspective.” Communication Theory 16, no. 2: 173-97. (This is the most frequently cited piece along with the one above. It outlines how CIT can also be used to look at civic participation.)
Nien-Tsu (Nancy) Chen, Wenlin Liu, Katherine Ognyanova, and Evelyn Moreno. (2018) “The Alhambra Project A Prototype for Using Communication Infrastructure Theory to Construct and Evaluate a Community News Site.” In Kim, Y., Matsaganis, M., Wilkin, H., and Jung, J. (Eds.) The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities.
Wenzel, Andrea. (2020). Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust. University of Illinois Press.
Kelly, Nina. (2025). “Bridging the civic information gap: A comparative study of Documenters’ notes and meeting minutes.” Journal of Civic Information, 7(1), 1-26