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Spatial Dynamics of Local News: Mapping City Co-Mentions in Alabama

  • Jieshu Wang
  • , Tugce B. Gundogdu
  • , Brian S. Butler
  • , Myeong Lee
  • George Mason University
  • University of Alabama

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study investigates how the relationships between cities are represented in local news by analyzing co-mentions of cities in 31,004 news articles from Alabama. Using a large language model, we extract geographic references and construct co-mention networks that reflect both spatial proximity and symbolic connections between cities. To interpret these links, we develop a classification framework of relationships between cities, such as common impacts and sequential dynamics. Our preliminary analysis reveals that news categories produce distinct patterns of spatial association. This offers a novel way for understanding media-driven spatial imaginaries, contributing to research on information geographies and shedding light on the relational dimensions of local information.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1708-1710
Number of pages3
JournalProceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Volume62
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2025

Keywords

  • city co-mentions
  • large language models
  • local information landscape
  • news
  • news deserts
  • spatial network

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