{"id":104555,"date":"2025-10-09T14:45:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=104555"},"modified":"2025-10-14T00:12:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T00:12:43","slug":"broken-news-can-applying-supply-chain-thinking-help-restore-trust-in-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2025\/10\/broken-news-can-applying-supply-chain-thinking-help-restore-trust-in-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken News: Can applying supply chain thinking help restore trust in media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2025 \u2013 Is the news media broken? According to a survey released last October by Gallup, Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media\u2014with less than one-third expressing trust in the media to report the news \u201cfully, accurately and fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While our relationship with the news may be more complicated than ever, having a well-informed citizenry has never been more important.<\/p>\n\n\n

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溏心vlog免费B站 Ph.D. student Derek Dubois spoke to Rhody Today about some of his research and how to begin rebuilding trust in the media. (溏心vlog免费B站 photo\/Derek Dobois)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Derek Dubois is a Ph.D. student in the College of Business<\/a> at 溏心vlog免费B站. His academic advisors are Mehmet Yalcin<\/a>, an associate professor in the College of Business and Hasan Ashraf<\/a>, an assistant professor in supply chain management at California State University Long Beach. With a background in media studies, and now as a doctoral candidate in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s supply chain management program, Dubois has a unique view of today\u2019s media environment. As part of his doctoral dissertation, he examined information flows in the news media, conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis on mainstream media coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the digital shift has opened news information to more voices and competition, it\u2019s also created challenges: misinformation, polarization, and the sheer speed at which content travels. Dubois contends that applying supply chain thinking can help us better understand how media and news information move through society, diagnose where things break down and how to address these problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results of Dubois\u2019 research, framing the flow of information as a supply chain, were published in the academic journal Online Information Review<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spoke with Rhody Today about some of that research and how to begin rebuilding trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the framework behind looking into the concept of how news media can be considered a supply chain? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I come from a pretty unique mix of experiences. I spent years working in finance and supply chain roles for a healthcare company, but I also have a master\u2019s in media studies, and taught film and media as an adjunct professor for over a decade. I\u2019ve always been fascinated by how the media shapes the way we see the world, and we\u2019re living in a time where our relationship with news feels more complicated than ever. So, when I decided to move into academia full-time, I wanted to bring those two worlds together. I started thinking: what if we looked at news the way we look at a supply chain (i.e., planned, sourced, produced, and distributed)? Framing it that way could help us break down the process, understand where things go wrong, and hopefully rebuild trust in news while giving media professionals new ways to think about how information flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What research is out there related to looking at how the news media can be considered a supply chain? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a significant body of research on news media from fields like media studies, journalism, communications and sociology. Very little of it, however, applies a supply chain perspective. There\u2019s been some early work, like Gary Graham\u2019s research<\/a>, which looked at how lessons from digitizing physical supply chains could apply to media. But overall, there isn\u2019t a dedicated stream of literature focused on media supply chains\u2014especially news. For a long time, supply chain scholarship was all about physical products. In the last couple of decades, though, we\u2019ve seen more attention on service supply chains\u2014things like healthcare or hospitality. News fits that model, especially now that it\u2019s shifted from a physical product, like a newspaper, to the digital flow of information. That\u2019s where I see the gap. My dissertation is about starting to fill that space and I think it\u2019s just the beginning. There\u2019s so much potential for applying supply chain thinking to better understand how media and especially news information, moves through society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are some of the stages in the supply chain for the flow of news information? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think about the stages of the news media supply chain, I see it starting with planning and sourcing. This includes deciding what\u2019s newsworthy and where the information comes from. From there, it moves into production, where stories are written, edited, and packaged for different formats, and finally into distribution, where they reach audiences through outlets like traditional news organizations, aggregators like Google News, and social media platforms. Digitalization has transformed all of this. It\u2019s made the supply chain more complex and more varied. On one end, you can have a single blogger reporting on their own, and on the other, a major story that flows through wire services that gets picked up by national outlets and then spreads through social media. That same digital shift has opened news information to more voices and competition, but it\u2019s also created challenges: misinformation, polarization, and the sheer speed at which content travels. Those dynamics are exactly why I think applying supply chain thinking can help us better understand and address these problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is information affected as it moves throughout the supply chain? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Information changes as it moves through the news media supply chain. The longer and more complex the chain, the more chances there are for it to be shaped, sometimes in helpful ways, like adding context or clarity, and sometimes in ways that distort it. At every stage (i.e., planning, sourcing, making, and distributing), choices are made that affect how a story takes shape. For example, decisions about which sources to use, how to frame the story, or even how much space or airtime it\u2019s given all influence the final product. Most importantly, though, is that news firms play gatekeeper roles, deciding which events are newsworthy vs. not. On top of that, broader factors like regulation, a news outlet\u2019s editorial priorities, or shifting public discourse about what counts as \u201cnews\u201d also play a role. Ultimately, a newsworthy event moves through all these layers before it reaches the audience, and what you see as a finished story has been filtered through each of those steps. That\u2019s why thinking about news as a supply chain is so powerful\u2014it helps us unpack where and how information gets reshaped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What surprised you most through researching the flow of information as a supply chain? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, what surprised me most was just how much complexity there is once you start mapping news information as a supply chain. I expected to see a linear process. But the reality is that it\u2019s this sprawling, multidirectional network with all these different actors, technologies, and feedback loops. Digitalization has completely reshaped things. The boundaries of where the \u201csupply chain\u201d starts and ends are much fuzzier than I anticipated. Social media means that sourcing often begins in completely decentralized ways, and distribution doesn\u2019t end anymore because stories can be reshared endlessly. I was also struck by how much institutional pressure like financial constraints, digital clicks and shifting norms have reshaped information as it moves through the chain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What node in the supply chain do you think has the biggest impact on the flow of information? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the most significant lever for change is rebuilding trust by re-establishing a shared understanding of facts. When digitalization pushed news into a 24\/7 cycle, outlets moved from simply reporting facts to providing nonstop analysis and commentary. Over time, that\u2019s fueled a system where different media supply chains frame events through very different worldviews, often politically. As a result, someone watching MSNBC and someone watching Fox News can walk away with entirely different versions of reality, even though both are technically covering the same events. Fixing that isn\u2019t simple. It\u2019s a societal challenge. But I think a supply chain lens can help us diagnose where things break down: whether that\u2019s in sourcing, production, or even how news is distributed and consumed. Pairing that with efforts like improving media literacy and refining more ethical, efficient information flows could open up a lot of necessary research and practical solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubois says that his goal is to help restore journalism to its vital role as the fourth estate. Though everyone carries their own unconscious biases and feels a particular way about certain media organizations Dubois notes that he\u2019s focusing on letting the data and his analysis lead him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2025 \u2013 Is the news media broken? According to a survey released last October by Gallup, Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media\u2014with less than one-third expressing trust in the media to report the news \u201cfully, accurately and fairly.\u201d While our relationship with the news may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":104556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[88,1914,1905],"class_list":["post-104555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-business","tag-graduate","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104555"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104572,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104555\/revisions\/104572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}