An interactive chart based on 27 Pew Research Center polls from 1993 to 2011 shows that television as a primary news source for the public has dropped from a high of 88% to a current level of 66%; and newspapers from a high of 63% to 31% currently. Meantime, the internet has risen steadily, passing radio in 2003, newspapers in 2008, and continuing to close the gap with television. Read more

Building on posts by AP's Jonathan Stray and NYU's Clay Shirky, we look at just how digital the "digital public sphere" really is, using data from the Pew Research Center on Americans' use of various media for news about national and international issues. Read more

A 12-month grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication will establish and pilot CDI's programs to integrate digital innovation with the policy research field. Read more

This dispatch from the Communications Network annual conference in Boston, following a plenary by "Filter Bubble" author Eli Pariser, argues that the social sector can partner with search engine developers by providing "data as data" rather than "data as documents." Read more

An update of a piece from August 2010 for posting over at NTEN. Data and information are not synonyms. Data only have the potential to inform. They are half the equation. It is communication that transforms data into information, and in a digital age the communication landscape has been fundamentally altered. Read more

Data Gatherers themselves should use digital-native techniques in the first telling of the stories in their data. In addition to injecting subject matter expertise into the online discussion of complex issues, it will create the welcome byproduct of better, cleaner data to support subsequent interactive development. Read more

Some thoughts on The Economist's article comparing the societal impact of IBM and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Read more

This draft roadmap contrasts a digital distribution model of communication that dominates many public policy organizations' activities with a modern digital information playbook — interactive, mobile and unmediated. Comments are welcome. Read and comment

Video - This presentation was given to a set of foundation communication professionals, academics and policy research executives on October 22, 2010. It lays out the case for a Center for Digital Information to assist policy organizations in using new media to better communicate their original information and data on issues of public importance. View presentation

New skill development, capacity building, innovation and creativity in digital rendering are needed wherever information is created, not just in newsrooms, and particularly within organizations that are increasingly direct information providers on issues of vital public importance. Read more

CDI spoke with the Communications Network about how over the past 15 years, we have spent a great deal of time thinking about how to disseminate content, but now it is time to fundamentally rethink the nature of that content — considering forms that weren't possible before the advent of the Internet. View the video

Director Jeff Stanger discusses the path to starting the Center for Digital Information, how policy research organizations' online habits have changed little in the first fifteen years of widespread use of the Web, and the importance for organizations to rethink their mechanisms for communicating research findings in a digital society. Read more

A report on a CDI pilot study measuring the extent to which policy research organizations engage in "digital information" shows that only 2% use interactive methods unique to the Internet. Read more

CDI director defines "digital distribution" and "digital information," an important distinction underpinning CDI's approach. Read more