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

Xosé López-García,María-Cruz Negreira-Rey

doi:10.30935/ojcmt/11082

Xosé López-García, María-Cruz Negreira-Rey

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/11082

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Abstract

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.

Highlights

The community media ecosystem began to undergo a profound process of upheaval during the first decade of the 2000s
The decade analysed in this paper was the first in which hyperlocal media were treated as subjects of study
The bibliographic review conducted on the first decade of literature on hyperlocal media shows that the research community developed an early interest in this new media reality

Summary

Introduction

The community media ecosystem began to undergo a profound process of upheaval during the first decade of the 2000s. As traditional local media sought formulas for their adaptation to the digital scene (Jenkins & Kleis Nielsen, 2018), technological development lowered costs for the production and dissemination of content on the internet. It gave audiences more active roles and made possible the entry of new actors, one of which was hyperlocal media (Radcliffe, 2012). Characterized by their mission to cover increasingly overlooked areas (Radcliffe, 2012), and by their orientation and commitment to the community (Metzgar, Kurpius, & Rowley, 2011), hyperlocal online media have revitalized the media ecosystem with new informational approaches close to the citizenship, new organizational and business models (Cook, Geels, & Bakker, 2016) and new ways of conceiving their relationships with audiences (Radcliffe, 2015)

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