Abstract
Increased interest in hyperlocal news has led to growing evidence of its economic value, its ability to play traditional democratic roles associated with news, and its merits and deficiencies in comparison with the outputs of a declining established commercial news industry. Given many hyperlocal producers cite the desire to play a role in producing better communities, this paper breaks new ground in examining the social and cultural dimensions of hyperlocal journalism’s news-making, community-building, and place-making roles. We examine this emergent cultural form’s affinity with telling stories, and enabling conversations, about civic and political concerns, but also its affinity with, and celebration of, the banal everyday. Employing the novel theoretical concept of reciprocal journalism, we provide new evidence about the mutually reinforcing online, and offline, practices that underpin relationships between producers and the communities they inhabit and represent. Drawing on evidence from the most extensive multi-method study of UK hyperlocal news to date, it demonstrates the different kinds of direct and indirect reciprocal exchange practices common in community news, and shows how such work, often composed of journalistic and community-activist practices, can enable and foster relationships of sustained reciprocity which improve and strengthen both hyperlocal news and the communities it serves.
Highlights
While much research about hyperlocal news to date offers insights into its value, and limitations, set against journalism’s commonly understood normative roles in society, little examines the more innovative, less traditional, roles that hyperlocal publishers play. Lewis, Holton, and Coddington (2014) offer an innovative theoretical lens that marks a move away from theoretical frames that primarily emphasise community news’ contributions to democracy and the public sphere: the novel theoretical concept of “reciprocal journalism”
Whilst direct reciprocity refers to a mutual exchange between individuals, Lewis, Holton, and Coddington (2014, 233) make the distinction between unilateral, informal reciprocal exchange and bilateral, negotiated exchange
The reciprocal journalism framework is a useful model to better understand the everyday nature of community journalism as it allows the researcher to consider hyperlocal journalism as a cultural practice that has as much to do with place-making as it does journalism
Summary
While much research about hyperlocal news to date offers insights into its value, and limitations, set against journalism’s commonly understood normative roles in society, little examines the more innovative, less traditional, roles that hyperlocal publishers play. Lewis, Holton, and Coddington (2014) offer an innovative theoretical lens that marks a move away from theoretical frames that primarily emphasise community news’ contributions to democracy and the public sphere: the novel theoretical concept of “reciprocal journalism”. Lewis, Holton, and Coddington (2014) offer an innovative theoretical lens that marks a move away from theoretical frames that primarily emphasise community news’ contributions to democracy and the public sphere: the novel theoretical concept of “reciprocal journalism”. They claim that this concept “could prove especially useful in studies of community journalism” (237). This paper draws on a large, multi-method, study of United Kingdom-based hyperlocal publishers to show how reciprocal practices between community journalists and community members can lead to “sustained reciprocity” over time based on “lasting forms of exchange that deepen collective trust, social capital, and overall connectedness —essential components for the vitality of communities of all kinds” (230). We will show how acts of reciprocal exchange
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