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In recent years much attention has been given to an emerging tier of community news websites, dubbed ‘hyperlocal media operations’ (Metzgar et al., 2011). Policy-makers (Ofcom, 2012) and investors (Radcliffe, 2012) both frame hyperlocal as a ‘solution’ to the decline of local news coverage in mainstream media yet although the role and value of citizen journalism is well discussed by community media historians (Atton, 2004) there is relatively little attention given to hyperlocal as a distinct emerging practice. Given the role the decline of the press may have on the public sphere (Siles and Boczkowski, 2012) and the potential pressure this places on hyperlocal online news publishers to “fill the gaps” (Metzgar et al., 2011), it is timely to consider the relationship between those who run hyperlocals and the communities they serve. This paper explores issues around audience reception of two hyperlocal publishers in the West Midlands, UK, with contrasting communities, backgrounds and working practices. Interviews with the hyperlocal producers explores their working practices, perceived role within their community, and methods of engagement. Workshops with citizens from those communities then explored their experiences of local news media. Issues of visibility, perception, and trust were evident and the paper explores the potential for communities of ‘produsers’ (Bruns, 2005) to be encouraged and developed. The research forms part of a 30 month Research Council funded project, ‘Media Community and the Creative Citizen’, investigating the role of the creative economy in connected communities.
This report examines the state of hyperlocal publishing in the UK and lays out core challenges facing the sector. It was commissioned by the Centre for Community Journalism at Cardiff University and the innovation agency Nesta. The report evidences the contribution of hyperlocal platforms to civic life and media plurality against a backdrop of closures, mergers, cutbacks and declining regional newspaper sales. It also showcases innovative business models and examples of community journalism influencing and informing grassroots decision-making. Citable URL: http://www.communityjournalism.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/C4CJ-Report-for-Screen.pdf
Digital Journalism
The Value of UK Hyperlocal Community News2014 •
The public interest value of news is often viewed through the prism of its relationship to democracy. In this respect news should act as: a source of accurate and plural information for citizens; a watchdog on elites; a mediator and/or representative of communities; and as an advocate of the public in campaigning terms. All of these roles are under pressure in the United Kingdom’s commercial local news sector. This has led many to speculate, often without evidence, that the output of a new generation of (mainly online) hyperlocal citizen news producers might (at least partially) play some of these roles. To test this assumption, we com- pleted 34 semi-structured interviews with producers, the largest content analysis to date of UK hyperlocal news content (1941 posts on 313 sites), and the largest ever survey of UK commu- nity news practitioners (183 responses). We found that these sites produce a good deal of news about community activities, local politics, civic life and local business. Official news sources get a strong platform, but the public (local citizens, community groups) get more of a say than in much mainstream local news. Although there was little balanced coverage in the traditional sense, many community journalists have developed alternative strategies to foster and inform plural debate around contentious local issues. The majority of hyperlocal news producers cover community campaigns and a significant minority have initiated their own. We also found that critical public-interest investigations are carried out by a (surprisingly) large number of community news producers.
What do we mean by local? The rise, fall and possible rise again of local journalism
Hyper-local Media: A Small but Growing Part of the Local Media Ecosystem2013 •
"Hyperlocal media has expanded significantly in the UK in the past 12 to 18 months, notes Damian Radcliffe. Supported by new funding and training initiatives, interest from academics and policy-makers, as well as the increased take-up of internet-enabled mobile devices, the result has been a step-change in activity and interest in the hyperlocal scene." Contribution to “What do we mean by local? The rise, fall and possible rise again of local journalism” – published Sept 2013 by Abramis Academic Publishing and edited by John Mair, Richard Lance Keeble, Neil Fowler: http://www.abramis.co.uk/books/bookdetails.php?id=184549593
2017 •
Presented at: Digital Opportunities and Challenges: Researching Journalism and Media in a Digital Age 26 & 27 January 2017 University of Sheffield ‘Hyperlocal’ media is a form of online, locally-focussed community media typically framed as citizen journalism, with expectations of “filling the gap” exposed by receding local newspapers, encouraging civic engagement (Metzgar, 2011) or creating “third places” of communication (Bruns, et. al, 2008). However, studies rarely explore the extent to which the highly participatory audiences have a role in defining these hyperlocal spaces, especially when social media platforms such as Facebook are often used by hyperlocal organisations to create online, local spaces where stories are disseminated but also sourced, discussed, corroborated and contested. This paper draws on two ethnographic studies in the West Midlands where offline and online methods (following Postill (2011)) reveal audience practices which frame the space as one of ‘information’ rather than ‘news’(Radcliffe, 2015), and explores how the audience’s use of hyperlocal platforms challenges the values and standards of traditional news journalism. Audiences source stories, comment, and share content which services the neighbourhood and local economy in unique ways, and fosters placemaking and civic pride, if not always directly fuelling everyday activism (Pink, 2012). However, such open and participatory practices also create tensions of agenda and power; while the content is typically mediated by citizen editors, and dually enabled and restrained by the technological platform, the audience often pulls in a third direction according to their own needs and it is these tensions which this paper ultimately addresses. Bruns, A., Wilson, J. A. and Saunders, B. J. 2008. Building spaces for hyperlocal citizen journalism. Metzgar, E. T., Kurpius, D. D. & Rowley, K. M. 2011. Defining hyperlocal media: Proposing a framework for discussion. New Media & Society, Vol 13, No 5, pp. 772-787. Pink, S. 2012. Situating Everyday Life: Practices and Places, SAGE Publications. Postill, J. 2011. Localizing the Internet: an anthropological account, Berghahn Books. Radcliffe, D. 2015. Where are we now? UK hyperlocal media and community journalism in 2015. Nesta. N.B. This presentation is of my PhD work, which I am currently writing up for submission in 2017
In recent years, a new wave of hyperlocal community news websites has developed in the United Kingdom (UK), with many taking advantage of new opportunities provided by free open-source publishing platforms. Given the trend in the UK newspaper industry towards closure and retrenchment of their local and regional press titles, it is perhaps understandable that policy-makers have shifted their gaze to these sites. This article examines the viability of hyperlocal news services with a particular focus on those that are independently owned and managed. Such operations often have a longevity that sits in contrast to a number of failed attempts by major media organisations to operate in the hyperlocal space. Yet many of the business models that underpin these sites seem precarious, often benefiting from a degree of self-exploitation. Drawing on 35 interviews with hyperlocal news publishers from across the UK, this article argues that publishers draw upon a civic discourse in order to make sense of their practice. This framing may limit the potential to develop economic sustainability and risks alienating policy-makers keen to work with an idealised “fictive” hyperlocal entrepreneur.
International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics
CAN BIG MEDIA DO ‘BIG SOCIETY’? A critical case study of commercial, convergent hyperlocal news2012 •
The UK Government is committed to helping “nurture a new generation of local media companies”. Changes to local media ownership rules allowing companies to follow their customers from platform to platform are supposed to assist in this by encouraging economies of scale. This paper provides a timely case study examining a UK-based commercial local news network owned by Daily Mail & General Trust that leverages economies of scale: Northcliffe Media’s network of 154 ‘Local People’ websites. The study evaluates the level of audience engagement with the ‘Local People’ sites through a user survey, and by looking at the numbers of active users, their contributions, and their connections with other users. Interviews with ten of the ‘community publishers’ who oversee each site on the ground were conducted, along with a content survey. Although the study reveals a demand for community content, particularly of a practical nature, the results question the extent to which this type of ‘big media’ local news website can succeed as a local social network, reinvigorate political engagement, or encourage citizen reporting. The Government hopes that communities, especially rural ones, will increasingly use the internet to access local news and information, thereby supporting new, profitable local media companies, who will nurture a sense of local identity and hold locally-elected politicians to account. This case study highlights the difficulties inherent in achieving such outcomes, even using the Government’s preferred convergent, commercial model.
Sage Handbook of Digital Journalism
BOOK CHAPTER: Hyperlocal Journalism2016 •
The decline of the mainstream local news is well charted and understood. But in recent years a new generation of community-oriented, predominantly digital, news outlets, often called hyperlocal news (Bruns 2011, Metzgar et al 2011), have begun to attract attention from academics (Jones and Salter 2012, Thurman et al 2011) policy makers (Department for Culture Media and Sport 2009), regulators (OFCOM 2012), and investors (Nesta 2012, Radcliffe 2012). Such news is written by a variety of social actors (community activists, alternative journalists, former or aspiring professional news journalists), for many overlapping reasons (civic, public service, commercial, campaigning, etc). It has been seen as an oppositional media form that can be critical of local institutions including local government and mainstream news (Harte 2013), and one whose informal, participatory, bottom-up nature may de-centre or undermine more established professional players (Cushion 2012, Hartley 2009). Others have aimed to understand whether and in what ways, hyperlocal news might contribute to the democratic roles previously played by (or at least attributed to) declining local commercial news (Williams et al 2013). This chapter will provide an overview of recent research into this emergent cultural form to outline its nature and sustainability, as well as the roles it plays in relation to citizenship, democracy, participation and local community life.
This article draws on 'hyperlocal' journalism scholarship to explore the civic functions of Australian local reporting in the digital age. Through place-based case studies based on interviews with media and civic leaders from three disparate communities, we find community groups are engaging with social media, particularly Facebook, to connect locals to services and community news. Community service providers are increasingly adept at using social media and, in many cases, prefer it to legacy media to gather, disseminate and exchange news. Concurrently, legacy media have lost newsroom resources that limit their practice of 'shoe leather' journalism and increase their dependence on official sources without independent verification. Yet, journalists are adapting to newsroom cutbacks by forming symbiotic relationships with non-media news providers, including local police. We find there are promising alternatives for fostering civic discourse and engagement through digital technologies despite less traditional local news and a reduced capacity for verified journalism.
2018 •
Abstract Hyperlocal media is a form of online, alternative community media created by citizens to service their locality. To date, much of the scholarly work in this area has focused on editorial practice, non-UK contexts, or frames these practices as response to receding mainstream local journalism and concerns of civic engagement. In this study I take a different approach, exploring instead the everyday, functional and social contexts which are established in the audience’s highly participatory use of hyperlocal Facebook Pages. I conceptualise such spaces as fields which are integrated both in the individual user’s media ideology, but also amongst a wider sense of overlapping fields of local information and socialities, both online and offline. This work emerges from ethnographic studies of two hyperlocal communities in the West Midlands, in which information was gathered through participant observation, interview, and via an innovative Community Panel approach. I argue that Facebook Pages play a key role for many people in engaging with their neighbourhoods, but not exclusively so, as I demonstrate their place amongst other sources of information and social life. The Pages benefit from being mediated by their editors to create online spaces that welcome participation partly shaped by the audience’s engagement and contribution, thus creating alternative streams of local information that challenge agendas set out by mainstream media. These become integrated into the everyday practices of the audience, therefore, care must be taken to recognise to what extent the broader experience of the neighbourhood is represented in such online practices, and I argue that certain narratives and discourses of the locality are contributed to and constructed online, and not always helpfully so, as in depictions of crime. Where the audience might challenge such depictions, and hold authority to account (the police, for example), this public sphere ideal is not typically acted through. Whilst this does not bode well for the literature’s hopes for political or civic engagement, this thesis demonstrates that audiences develop such spaces in their own vision, to enact and share a capital of local knowledge and information, sometimes innovating in their own ways using mobile technologies in order to do so. This thesis concludes by saying that such online spaces demonstrate the role of media technologies in everyday life, and the extent to which they are perpetuated and maintained by practitioners and their increasingly capable and enabled audiences.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication
Local and Hyperlocal Journalism2018 •
There are more local news outlets operating around the world at any given moment than larger-scale metropolitan newsrooms, and yet it is the latter that have dominated journalism scholarship. As a specific area of inquiry, local journalism—often branded “community journalism” or “hyperlocal journalism”—is a relatively new but rapidly growing field of research in this period of digital disruption. Scholars argue that studying news at the local level can offer rich insights into the role and place of journalism more broadly and reveal much about why people engage with news. Local journalism has been highlighted for its distinct role in reinforcing notions of and building community and the importance of social and public connection among audiences. More recently, attention has shifted to business models sustaining local news given the turbulence facing traditional media and the rapid closure of long-serving local newspapers, especially in the United Kingdom. Scholars have also emphasiz...
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