Explicating Local: An Audience-Based Framing of Local Community and Local News

Abstract

In recent years, much has been made of the crisis in local news. Communities across the United States are rapidly losing local news coverage. In response, policymakers and community advocates have sought to craft new mechanisms to support the health of local news ecosystems. This work interrogates the core ways in which community members understand and define the communities within which they live and examines the socioeconomic and media variables that impact how local communities are defined by the people living in those communities. Data are drawn from a national survey in the United States that was designed and implemented to better understand different framings of local communities in the context of media. Findings demonstrate the critical role that media, and the provision of media serving critical information needs, has in the mutual shaping of how community members define and perceive the boundaries of what is local. Subjective definitions are far more prominent and are shaped more directly by media consumption and the context of place. Firm boundaries are hard to establish, but this work points to key levers such as local newspapers, local television, and community size that directly impact how community members perceive their local community.