Dmitry Shishkin's User Needs model is a framework that investigates the reasons why people consume news and information into eight core needs grouped into four categories: fact-driven (update me and keep me engaged), context-driven (educate me and give me perspective), emotion-driven (divert me and inspire me), and action-driven (connect me and help me).

If you don't know about Shishkin's fantastic work you can read about it and download the white paper here. The model, first developed and implemented at the BBC, is used in the journalism industry to capture broader motivations for consuming news and better tailor content to the audience.

Although in our modular journalism project we use the expression user information needs, we are obviously referring to a different concept entirely. To the point that our atomic needs (and effects) could be, perhaps, roughly matched to Shishkin's. Psst, this is a work in progress.