Who Gets Vocal About Hyperlocal

Bobkowski, Piotr S.; Jiang, Liefu; Peterlin, Laveda J.; Rodriguez, Nathan John

doi:10.1080/17512786.2017.1419827

“…This is a new finding since the geographical side of online news has received little attention. Furthermore, we found that these factors include state-level personality and cultural factors rather than, as it could have been hypothesized from previous studies 12 , 84 , 85 , socio-economic conditions or political characteristics.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

The role of the big geographic sort in online news circulation among U.S. Reddit users

Bozarth

¹

,

Quercia

²

,

Capra

³

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

2

0

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Past research has attributed the circulation of online news to two main factors—individual characteristics (e.g., a person’s information literacy) and social media effects (e.g., algorithm-mediated information diffusion)—and has overlooked a third one: the critical mass created by the offline self-segregation of Americans into like-minded geographical regions such as states (a phenomenon called ‘The Big Sort’). We hypothesized that this latter factor matters for the online spreading of news not least because online interactions, despite having the potential of being global, end up being localized: interaction probability is known to rapidly decay with distance. Upon analysis of more than 8M Reddit comments containing news links spanning four years, from January 2016 to December 2019, we found that Reddit did not work as an ‘hype machine’ for news (as opposed to what previous work reported for other platforms, circulation was not mainly caused by platform-facilitated network effects). Rather, news circulation in Reddit worked as a supply-and-demand system: news items scaled linearly with the number of users in each state (with a scaling exponent $$\beta$$ β $$\approx 1$$ ≈ 1 , and a goodness of fit $$R^2\approx 0.95$$ R 2 ≈ 0.95 ). Furthermore, deviations from such a universal pattern were best explained by state-level personality and cultural factors ($$R^2\approx \{0.12, 0.39\}$$ R 2 ≈ { 0.12 , 0.39 } ), rather than socioeconomic conditions ($$R^2\approx \{0.15, 0.29\}$$ R 2 ≈ { 0.15 , 0.29 } ) or political characteristics ($$R^2\approx \{0.06, 0.21\}$$ R 2 ≈ { 0.06 , 0.21 } ). Higher-than-expected circulation of any type of news was found in states characterised by residents who tend to be less diligent in terms of their personality (low in conscientiousness) and by loose cultures understating the importance of adherence to norms (low in cultural tightness). Interestingly, the combination of those factors with low levels of education was then associated with the circulation of a particular type of news, that is, misinformation. These results suggest that online interactions are geographically bounded and, as such, news circulation cannot be studied purely as an Internet phenomenon but should be grounded into a user’s offline cultural environment, which has become increasingly segregated over the decades, and is admittedly hard to change.

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“…The first level, active consumption , involves interpreting and discussing the news with acquaintances, family and friends (Bobkowski et al, 2019). This hardly requires any effort or resources.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Be cautious or be cancelled: News audience’s motivations not to participate in online journalism

Mentzel

¹

,

Slot

²

,

Nieuwenhuis

³

2023

Journalism

2

0

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News organizations try to improve the relationship with their audiences by seeking interaction with them - also known as participatory journalism. But not everyone participates; many news consumers do not surpass reading, watching, or listening to news. The explanations for lagging participation are scattered and not yet comprehensively integrated in an overarching overview. This study provides a more in-depth account of the different motivations of Dutch younger (<30) and older (<50) news users not to use the participatory tools that news websites offer. In this paper the motivations of these different groups are uncovered and compared. Our thematic analysis indicates that both groups are mostly driven by similar motivations. The main motivation both generations bring forward is their aversion towards the online community. Reluctance because of expertise (younger audience members) or career implications (older audience members) seem to be the most important difference between the two groups.

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“…Bingham-Hall and Law (2015) also studied how the social profiles of hyperlocal media can trigger the formation of virtual communities among their readers. Bobkowski et al (2019) analysed how the engagement within the community determines the way in which such users consume hyperlocal information and also how they share it among their contacts, both physically and in virtual spaces. Moreover, Liu et al (2018) explored how the link created between hyperlocal news websites and local residents impacts civic participation.…”

Section: User Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Decade of Research on Hyperlocal Media: An International Approach to a New Media Model

Negreira-Rey

¹

,

García

²

2021

ONLINE J. COMMUN. MEDIA TECHNOL

11

0

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The growth of hyperlocal media has rekindled the ecosystem of local media in recent years. An international phenomenon, it has already been the subject of much study in the academy, despite it being a recent occurrence. This article deals with the literature review of scientific articles published during the first decade of hyperlocal media research. The results show the keen interest that researchers had early on in this new media model, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia where it was studied more intensely. The works published from 2010 to 2020 exhibit an interest in the study of the transformation of the media ecosystem, the mapping and analysis of the characteristics of the media, their organizational and business models, as well as their informative production and the relationship with the audience.

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Who Gets Vocal About Hyperlocal

Cited by 13 publications

References 46 publications

The role of the big geographic sort in online news circulation among U.S. Reddit users

The role of the big geographic sort in online news circulation among U.S. Reddit users

Be cautious or be cancelled: News audience’s motivations not to participate in online journalism

A Decade of Research on Hyperlocal Media: An International Approach to a New Media Model

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