Sustainability and Environmental Communities of Practice’s Impact on News Content Diversity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Communities of practice (CoP) are distinct community groups that share a common interest in which they interact with one another to address problems and reach goals. In the present study, we investigated one niche community—sustainability and environmental communities of practice—to determine whether stronger communities of practices differed from weaker ones. We developed a summative index rating each sampled university student news publication with a single score ranging from 0–3 to represent community of practice strength: (a) universities with a sustainability ranking, (b) student publications with an environmental specialization, (c) universities with an environmental journalism specialization, and (d) no CoP to determine whether university students situated in stronger communities practiced journalism differently. Data from a content analysis of sustainability and environmental news articles showed the strongest sustainability community of practice was related to more topic diversity, but source affiliation diversity levels appear to continue to remain mostly constant across contexts and time. Implications concerning environmental journalism training and university outreach are discussed.