The Active Citizen's Information Media Repertoire: An Exploration of Community News Habits During the Digital Age

Abstract

Digital technologies have reconfigured how active community members know about local news. Sampling one Midwest community's most engaged citizens—collectively, a “community of practice”—this research formalizes one emerging media-information repertoire around the issue of homelessness. Components of this repertoire include motivations, structuring conditions, norms of usage, and perceived consequences for media-source selection. Commenting, sharing, and other information exchange become “acts of news” for individuals involved in communities of practice. Through shared information-exchange practices, citizens can not only advocate their social causes but also reinvigorate their own affiliations to the community of practice and to the city itself. The use of this media repertoire by these individuals reconstitutes and amplifies their role in the pursuit of fostering a civil society focused on homelessness. The findings illuminate the process of how community activists work as an informal organizational form and, as a result, build a stronger commitment to civic action.