My work is about the infrastructure of information distribution: how it is built, what it costs, and who it reaches.
Publications
Attention without arrival: How recommendation shapes what counts as news
Abstract
Recommendation systems decide not only what audiences see but what enters the record as newsworthy. Using three years of platform traces, we separate demand-side selection from supply-side promotion and show the two pull in opposite directions during breaking events.
Small newsrooms, long distances: Circulation as an infrastructure problem
Abstract
Local news coverage is usually modeled as an economic outcome. We model it instead as a logistics one, and find that distance to the nearest printing facility explains more variance in circulation decline than advertising revenue does.
What editors think algorithms want
Abstract
Interviews with 24 editors reveal a folk theory of distribution that is largely wrong in its particulars and largely right in its consequences.
Works in progress
Measuring the shape of an information environment
Ten years of platform migration, reconstructed from archives