Hyperlocal News

Being aware of local community information is critical to maintaining civic engagement and participation. The use of online news and microblog content to create and disseminate community information has long been studied. However, interactions in the online spaces dedicated to local communities tend to only garner very limited usage, and people often do not consider microblog content as a meaningful source of local community information. Local News Chatter (LNC) was designed to address these challenges by augmenting local news feeds with microblog content and presenting them in a tag cloud that displays news topics of varying popularity with different tag sizes. Our study with 30 local residents highlights that LNC increases the visibility of hyperlocal community news information and successfully utilizes microblog as an additional information layer. LNC also increases one's community awareness and shows the potential for leveraging community knowledge as a deliberation platform...

"Hyperlocal media has expanded significantly in the UK in the past 12 to 18 months, notes Damian Radcliffe. Supported by new funding and training initiatives, interest from academics and policy-makers, as well as the increased take-up of internet-enabled mobile devices, the result has been a step-change in activity and interest in the hyperlocal scene."

Contribution to “What do we mean by local? The rise, fall and possible rise again of local journalism” – published Sept 2013 by Abramis Academic Publishing and edited by John Mair, Richard Lance Keeble, Neil Fowler: http://www.abramis.co.uk/books/bookdetails.php?id=184549593

Abstract
Hyperlocal media is a form of online, alternative community media created by citizens to service their locality. To date, much of the scholarly work in this area has focused on editorial practice, non-UK contexts, or frames these practices as response to receding mainstream local journalism and concerns of civic engagement. In this study I take a different approach, exploring instead the everyday, functional and social contexts which are established in the audience’s highly participatory use of hyperlocal Facebook Pages. I conceptualise such spaces as fields which are integrated both in the individual user’s media ideology, but also amongst a wider sense of overlapping fields of local information and socialities, both online and offline. This work emerges from ethnographic studies of two hyperlocal communities in the West Midlands, in which information was gathered through participant observation, interview, and via an innovative Community Panel approach.

I argue that Facebook Pages play a key role for many people in engaging with their neighbourhoods, but not exclusively so, as I demonstrate their place amongst other sources of information and social life. The Pages benefit from being mediated by their editors to create online spaces that welcome participation partly shaped by the audience’s engagement and contribution, thus creating alternative streams of local information that challenge agendas set out by mainstream media. These become integrated into the everyday practices of the audience, therefore, care must be taken to recognise to what extent the broader experience of the neighbourhood is represented in such online practices, and I argue that certain narratives and discourses of the locality are contributed to and constructed online, and not always helpfully so, as in depictions of crime. Where the audience might challenge such depictions, and hold authority to account (the police, for example), this public sphere ideal is not typically acted through. Whilst this does not bode well for the literature’s hopes for political or civic engagement, this thesis demonstrates that audiences develop such spaces in their own vision, to enact and share a capital of local knowledge and information, sometimes innovating in their own ways using mobile technologies in order to do so. This thesis concludes by saying that such online spaces demonstrate the role of media technologies in everyday life, and the extent to which they are perpetuated and maintained by practitioners and their increasingly capable and enabled audiences.

This report examines the state of hyperlocal publishing in the UK and lays out core challenges facing the sector. It was commissioned by the Centre for Community Journalism at Cardiff University and the innovation agency Nesta.

The report evidences the contribution of hyperlocal platforms to civic life and media plurality against a backdrop of closures, mergers, cutbacks and declining regional newspaper sales. It also showcases innovative business models and examples of community journalism influencing and informing grassroots decision-making.

Citable URL: http://www.communityjournalism.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/C4CJ-Report-for-Screen.pdf

Аннотация: статья посвящена изучению влияния мобильных медиа на коммуникативное пространство современного города. Авторы рассматривают мобильные приложения KnockChat и Meanwhile, которые предоставляют новые возможности для освоения городского пространства и формирования коммуникативных связей.
Ключевые слова: городские коммуникации, мобильные приложения, медиа, город, гиперлокальные медиа, добрососедство.

Presented at: Digital Opportunities and Challenges: Researching Journalism and Media in a Digital Age
26 & 27 January 2017
University of Sheffield

‘Hyperlocal’ media is a form of online, locally-focussed community media typically framed as citizen journalism, with expectations of “filling the gap” exposed by receding local newspapers, encouraging civic engagement (Metzgar, 2011) or creating “third places” of communication (Bruns, et. al, 2008). However, studies rarely explore the extent to which the highly participatory audiences have a role in defining these hyperlocal spaces, especially when social media platforms such as Facebook are often used by hyperlocal organisations to create online, local spaces where stories are disseminated but also sourced, discussed, corroborated and contested.

This paper draws on two ethnographic studies in the West Midlands where offline and online methods (following Postill (2011)) reveal audience practices which frame the space as one of ‘information’ rather than ‘news’(Radcliffe, 2015), and explores how the audience’s use of hyperlocal platforms challenges the values and standards of traditional news journalism.  Audiences source stories, comment, and share content which services the neighbourhood and local economy in unique ways, and fosters placemaking and civic pride, if not always directly fuelling everyday activism (Pink, 2012). However, such open and participatory practices also create tensions of agenda and power; while the content is typically mediated by citizen editors, and dually enabled and restrained by the technological platform, the audience often pulls in a third direction according to their own needs and it is these tensions which this paper ultimately addresses.

Bruns, A., Wilson, J. A. and Saunders, B. J. 2008. Building spaces for hyperlocal citizen journalism.
Metzgar, E. T., Kurpius, D. D. & Rowley, K. M. 2011. Defining hyperlocal media: Proposing a framework for discussion. New Media & Society, Vol 13, No 5, pp. 772-787.
Pink, S. 2012. Situating Everyday Life: Practices and Places, SAGE Publications.
Postill, J. 2011. Localizing the Internet: an anthropological account, Berghahn Books.
Radcliffe, D. 2015. Where are we now? UK hyperlocal media and community journalism in 2015. Nesta.

N.B. This presentation is of my PhD work, which I am currently writing up for submission in 2017

Data journalism is still a nascent concept in the emerging hyperlocal media sector, but examples of activity do exist – particularly in the US – and steps can be taken to make it more mainstream. This book chapter was part of "Data Journalism: Mapping the Future" published in 10 Jan 2014 and edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble. See: http://www.abramis.co.uk/books/bookdetails.php?id=184549616 for more details.

To support and enrich crowdsourcing, sharing and consuming of hyperlocal news content created by the readers we created four scenarios that utilize augmented reality (AR). We used the scenarios to gain an initial understanding of the feasibility and utility of AR in this context by interviewing five contributors of hyperlocal news content to explore their perceptions and further ideas on the scenarios. Findings indicate that AR is an interesting and acceptable solution for the content creators: AR can be applied in hyperlocal news 1) in the crowdsourcing processes to support crowdworkers’ activity and its planning and 2) for sharing and consuming location-based user-generated content. In implementation of AR solutions, attention needs to be paid to the interestingness of tasks and created content, ensuring the quality of the content as well as how interaction with the AR application and access to the information and content are implemented.

Over the last 15 years, the acceleration in media consolidation has presented a series of policy challenges around diversity of editorial output. While policy debates on national ownership limits and other regulatory interventions are important, developments at the local level are often marginalised. And yet, the direction of travel—towards more consolidation and more deregulation—has arguably been more debilitating for democracy at the local level, where the vast majority of citizens interact with hospitals, schools, transport systems and local councils. The decline of local media—including, in some towns, the wholesale disappearance of local newspapers—leaves citizens starved of information and local institutions less accountable. This article uses an existing conceptual framework for assessing whether and how journalism makes a real-life contribution to democratic life at the local level. Against this normative framework, it then assesses the contribution of hyperlocal media sites to local democracy. We present findings from the most extensive survey of the hyperlocal sector to date, a collaboration with research partners at Cardiff and Birmingham City Universities and Talk About Local, which analysed online questionnaires from over 180 local online media initiatives. Our research offers a unique insight into the funding, operational problems and sustainability of community media sites, and suggests they have the potential to fulfil a vital democratic and civic role. These data inform our conclusions and recommendations for policy initiatives that would invigorate hyperlocal sites and therefore provide a real alternative for otherwise democratically impoverished local communities.

Given the newspaper industry’s trend towards closure and retrenchment of their local and regional press titles  and the subsequent concerns about the impact this may have on the public sphere (Siles and Boczkowski 2012), it is perhaps understandable that policy-makers and commentators have shifted their gaze to the role of hyperlocal online news services and the “role that these services are likely to play in the local media ecosystem” (Ofcom 2012: 111). This paper examines aspects of the practices of those who run hyperlocal websites and understands them in the context of debates around digital labour (Scholz 2013) and everyday activism (Pink 2012). It draws on interviews with hyperlocal producers and findings from a content analysis of 1941 stories published on 313 hyperlocal sites over a period of 11 days in May 2012. The paper examines publishing practices related to photography rights management, or lack thereof, and identifies how hyperlocal websites, through their practice, situate themselves outside of the existing political economy of media organisations. The paper describes a landscape whereby the technologies and means exist for hyperlocal media to play into its perceived role as “a range of journalism acting in the public good and engagement facilitated through interactive media” (Metzgar et al. 2011: 772), but this is not necessarily mirrored in our content analysis. The research forms part of a 30 month Research Council funded project, ‘Media Community and the Creative Citizen’, investigating the role of the Creative Economy in Connected Communities.

Hyperlocal media is a form of citizen-led, online community media serving at neighbourhood level. Frequently deployed on social media and resulting in high levels of audience participation, we might assume that such spaces enable residents in a civic and activist mode. This article ethnographically explores hyperlocal audiences to investigate the potential for spaces of public sphere. In studying two Facebook Pages in the West Midlands, UK, I found that, whilst public opinion was formed over civic matters, often in critique of police or the local councils, the ideal of mobilising to directly challenge such authorities was rarely followed through. I therefore question the value or agency in talking about authority rather than to them. The citizen editors do attempt to encourage activism, but I suggest that audiences become too reliant on their efforts and revert to more passive “clicktivism”. The article also raises concerns that such online spaces offer authorities opportunity for covert monitoring of citizens, at odds with the public sphere ideal. This article therefore informs wider understanding of the nature of participation. Hyperlocal spaces clearly offer functional and social value, but the idea that this equates to a powerful public sphere is challenged.

The three New South Wales market towns of Campbelltown, Camden and Picton made up the Macarthur region where several local town-based newspapers emerged in the 1880s. Local newspapers used local history to enable their readers to reflect on their past by storytelling and creating an understanding of their cultural heritage. The local press lionised the historical legacy of John Macarthur and contributed to the construction of a regional identity bearing his name through the creation of regional newspaper mastheads. The key actors in this narrative were newspaper owner-editors, their mastheads and the historical figure of Macarthur. This article uses a qualitative approach to chart the growth and changes of newspaper mastheads, their owner-editors and Macarthur mythmaking and regionalism.

We conducted a five-week field trial on mobile crowdsourcing of hyperlocal news content to 1) understand the readers’ experiences and 2) explore factors affecting their participation. In the end of the study the participants were surveyed with an online questionnaire (17/104 respondents) and five participants were interviewed. Although respondents and interviewees were enthusiastic about the trial, the activity in the trial was low. Results indicate that participant characteristics (age, gender, participation motivations and hobbyist background in photography) and task characteristics in terms of the subjectively perceived task significance (possible impact on important issues in the environment or on community), task relevance (related to the background and participation motivation), and task engagingness have an effect on the participation. In addition, participation was influenced by the estimated needed effort vs. the expected benefit (monetary benefit or having a possibility to influence), vicinity to the assignment location, enjoyment of the activity, and the monetary reward. To plan and manage the crowdsourcing activity the news publishers need information about the characteristics of the participants, participation patterns and motivations that could be provided by the crowdsourcing platform.

Disruption of space and time is a feature of modern life, and nowhere is this more evident than in local communities, where outside influences routinely bring the world into our everyday lives. This study found evidence of disruption and Anthony Giddens’ concept of disembedding in hyperlocal and community news, which focuses on a single neighborhood or distinct portion of a metropolitan or rural area. It studied media in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where three hyperlocal and community news organizations compete to cover the same community: The Sun Press ,
a traditional community weekly newspaper; The Heights Observer , a “citizen journalism” publication run by community volunteers; and Patch.com, a national network of hyperlocal websites staffed by professional journalists (Cleveland Heights site only). Among the three, only The Heights Observer named more local than non-local places in its pages, in a content analysis of a sample collected in August 2013, when the three publications were at their highest levels of staffing. Furthermore, only in The Heights Observer were the five most-named places actually local—that is, located within the publication’s stated coverage area.

Report into how Birmingham City Council engages with citizens. I was asked to present to the committee (on 22nd October 2013) about the value of hyperlocal publishing within Birmingham.

Cited on pages 26 and 46. Full evidence submission is in a supplementary evidence pack (p210 - http://bit.ly/1uqf7zk)

Making a hyperlocal site sustainable in the long term can be hard work. There is no one solution that works – it depends on your community, the local economy and what you are trying to achieve. This is a transcript of my video/mini-lecture discussing a number of approaches to ensuring your community site can ensure it has the funding to survive.

© Cardiff University via https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/community-journalism/steps/8722/progress

The public interest value of news is often viewed through the prism of its relationship to democracy. In this respect news should act as: a source of accurate and plural information for citizens; a watchdog on elites; a mediator and/or representative of communities; and as an advocate of the public in campaigning terms. All of these roles are under pressure in the United Kingdom’s commercial local news sector. This has led many to speculate, often without evidence, that the output of a new generation of (mainly online) hyperlocal citizen news producers might (at least partially) play some of these roles. To test this assumption, we com- pleted 34 semi-structured interviews with producers, the largest content analysis to date of UK hyperlocal news content (1941 posts on 313 sites), and the largest ever survey of UK commu- nity news practitioners (183 responses). We found that these sites produce a good deal of news about community activities, local politics, civic life and local business. Official news sources get a strong platform, but the public (local citizens, community groups) get more of a say than in much mainstream local news. Although there was little balanced coverage in the traditional sense, many community journalists have developed alternative strategies to foster and inform plural debate around contentious local issues. The majority of hyperlocal news producers cover community campaigns and a significant minority have initiated their own. We also found that critical public-interest investigations are carried out by a (surprisingly) large number of community news producers.

Newsworthiness has historically been understood through studying mainstream news content. But in alternative forms of community media, the audience has agency to determine the output. This chapter investigates news value from their perspective. Studies of newsworthiness and shareability are first introduced, before focussing on the field of ‘hyperlocal media’. The chapter then draws on ethnographic fieldwork from two UK neighbourhoods with highly participatory local Facebook Pages, spaces of local knowledge and information maintained and shared by the audience, demonstrating their investment in certain story types and local subject matter. The chapter closes by recognising how audiences share content based on what they deem to be immediately functional, but also socially valuable, and how such insights might prove useful to the wider field of journalism.

A proposta desta dissertação de mestrado é desenvolver o mapeamento, a investigação e a interpretação de narrativas construídas em torno do discurso de três atores sociais, definidos como nossos estudos de caso, em seus perfis mantidos em redes sociais digitais. O objetivo é analisar como esses atores, originários de territorialidades diversas, deslocam-se por diferentes espaços midiáticos, gerando processos comunicacionais relevantes, de alto impacto e geradores de grande volume de respostas. Por meio dessa análise, buscamos refletir sobre as características da comunicação e mediação em duas plataformas digitais de redes sociais com forte adesão no Brasil: Facebook e Twitter. As transformações que tais atores promovem, por meio da circulação de bens simbólicos e de capital social, também fazem parte do escopo de análise. O fluxo contínuo de inter-relação entre rede digital e localidade permite, ainda, observar a retroalimentação de bens simbólicos, o desenho de narrativas interdependentes e a ressignificação de enunciados. O corpus empírico desta pesquisa é composto da análise de enunciados publicados em sites de redes sociais, blogs e notícias, além de entrevistas em profundidade, referentes aos três estudos de caso. Em comum, tais indivíduos são jovens, atuantes nas redes sociais digitais, com laços em suas comunidades, capazes de se fazer ouvir dentro e fora do espaço digital. Ao constituírem-se como modelos de uma determinada visão de juventude, transformam-se em instrumentos úteis para a sociedade de controle? Alinhavando a análise, deve-se contextualizar as redes sociais dentro da definição de Castells de sociedade organizada em rede, complementada pela visão de Rosensthiel. Ao abordar o desejo intrínseco de romper o isolamento social, cultural e pessoal, por meio de um projeto de construção de identidade, deve-se utilizar Maffesoli, em contraponto a Castells e sua definição de identidades primárias, passando pela afirmação de Flusser de que o impulso de comunicação atende justamente à necessidade de romper a solidão em que se encontra o indivíduo em sua condição humana mais primordial. Para delimitar as questões específicas deste estudo, usaremos as definições de mídia e ambiente digital de Leão, assim como os estudos de Recuero sobre redes sociais e os parâmetros introduzidos por Wellman. As questões metodológicas serão direcionadas por meio dos parâmetros da pesquisa qualitativa proposta por Alami; dos métodos de pesquisa específicos para internet apontados por Fragoso, Recuero e Amaral. Para a fundamentação teórica conceitual sobre métodos, utilizaremos o conceito de complexidade de Morin.

Abstract. We conducted a five-week field trial on mobile crowdsourcing of hyperlocal news content to 1) understand the readers ’ experiences and 2) explore factors affecting their participation. In the end of the study the participants were surveyed with an online questionnaire (17/104 respondents) and five participants were interviewed. Although respondents and interviewees were enthusiastic about the trial, the activity in the trial was low. Results indicate that participant characteristics (age, gender, participation motivations and hobbyist background in photography) and task characteristics in terms of the subjectively perceived task significance (possible impact on important issues in the environment or on community), task relevance (related to the background and participation motivation), and task engagingness have an effect on the participation. In addition, participation was influenced by the estimated needed effort vs. the expected benefit (monetary benefit or having a pos...

A preliminary report of impressions from the Journalism Entrepreneurship Summit 2015, the first effort to convene key stakeholder groups face-to-face in order to take the pulse of the UK’s journalism entrepreneurship ecosystem. Convened by François Nel of the universities of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Oxford in collaboration with William Perrin and Sarah Hartley of Talk About Local and Javier Luque Martinez of the International Press Institute, the day-long workshop on 27th February 2015 was hosted by Google at Campus London and facilitated by Katie Taylor and Onno Baudouin of UCLan with additional project support from Emma Urjasova of the University of Leeds and reporting by Gemma Walsh of Oxford. CORRESPONDENCE from entrepreneurs, support agencies, researchers, educators and policy makers who would like to collaborate further are particularly welcome and should be sent to: François Nel, Director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at the University of Central Lancashire and Vi...

Turner, J. (2015) Engaging and working with community participants in ethnographic contexts: The Community Panel method: Presentation at: How To Play Knowledge, Birmingham, 2015.

Research within communities always faces specific challenges of explaining the aims and objectives to those participants we might consider ‘objects of study’ at one level, but in other contexts, should rather be thought of in terms of co-creation partners, or participants in the sense that the work is potentially owned, designed and carried out in partnership, rather than just by the researchers.

I am in the third year of study for my PhD at the School of Media, having completed a pilot 10-month ethnography of hyperlocal community media audiences in Wolverhampton, and now in the middle of a second, 12-month study in south Birmingham, in the vein of John Postill’s work in Kuala Lumpur exploring both online and offline dimensions of everyday community living (2011), typical of approaches to online ethnography (Horst and Miller, 2013).

My paper explores ways of engaging, communicating with and recruiting community participants, where it is unlikely they will have been involved in academic research before. Whilst my pilot work in Wolverhampton was largely observational online, involving some attendance of local events, and a small number of interviews, in south Birmingham I have introduced the concept of a Community Panel. The panel is a convenient label for an online and offline grouping of participants into a pool, whereby we choose the methods best suited to all parties. Some I have met in tearooms, at events, or during their lunch breaks at work, whilst others have emailed statements, been involved in discussions in our Facebook group, Skyped, or shared photos with me online (Pink, 2013). The nature of such methods of course creates sprawling data types (along with my own daily research diary), but also builds on my earlier interview approach to ease access problems, and explores the everyday nature of hyperlocal media sites and their meanings for audiences.


Horst, H. A. and Miller, D. 2013. Digital anthropology, A&C Black.

Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography. Sage.

Postill, J. 2011. Localizing the Internet: an anthropological account, Berghahn Books.

This online article forms part of the materials for the Centre for Community Journalism MOOC 2015, an online course targeted at hyperlocal media and citizen journalism practitioners, with over 10,000 signups.

The article presents findings from my PhD study, with the intention of generating questions or raising issues for discussion.

Cites my co-authored work investigating hyperlocal media practitioners as evidence that "these sites produce a lot of news
about community activities, local politics, civic life, and local business" p. 52.

Ofcom’s role in furthering the interests of citizens includes seeking to ensure that people have access to the services and content they need in order to participate fully in society. This report provides an overview of people’s online use of such services and content in a range of citizen-orientated areas.

Work cited: Williams, A., Harte, D. and Turner, J. (2014) The Value of UK Hyperlocal Community News:
Findings from a content analysis, an online survey and interviews with producers.

[Cites my 2012 blog post about analysis of hyperlocal sites, the Creative Citizens project, and also the report co-authored with William, Barnett, Townend - I am erroneously left off the author list. See endnotes 7, 9 & 12 on page 18]

Over the past two years the Carnegie UK Trust’s Neighbourhood News initiative has supported five leading local news projects with £10,000 each to deliver community news in new and innovative ways. The Trust’s new policy summary draws on key findings from Neighbourhood News and sets out a new agenda for the future of local news in the UK. The policy summary provides 11 recommendations for how government, regulators, funders and other local news providers can support community-led local news.

[Section 6.3 (p51) examines hyperlocal media and draws on my primary research, a report and a journal article. The primary research was commissioned from me by Ofcom directly for this report]

Ofcom’s role in furthering the interests of citizens includes seeking to ensure that people have access to the services and content they need in order to participate fully in society. This report provides an overview of people’s online use of such services and content in a range of citizen-orientated areas.

Given that ‘Hyperlocal’ publishing on the Internet is now attracting the attention of policy-makers (Ofcom 2012), investors (Nesta 2012) and researchers (such as Kurpius et al 2011), Emily T. Metzgar & Karen M. Rowley, it seems timely to assess the scale of such websites in the UK. This paper reports on research completed as part of the ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen’ project on behalf of Ofcom. This study uses existing data that identifies websites that are, by and large, independent of mainstream media organisations and whose intended audience is from a specific, often small, geographic area. It outlines the number of active Hyperlocal websites and the volume of stories they produce. It finds that whilst the challenge they pose to the local press might be overstated, their collective output, and continued growth, is of a scale that warrants further research. The research concludes that the dynamic nature of this emerging sector makes it difficult to identify a clear baseline upon which to measure.

As one of the three major projects funded by the AHRC under their Connected Communities and the Creative Economy strand, the ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen’ project is utilising a range of research methods to better understand the potential value of the acts of creative citizenship which lie at the heart of hyperlocal news. To date a range of research methods have been utilised such as content analysis, interviews and focus groups. This paper also reflects on the value of those methods, describes planned future methods and outlines some early findings from the project.

Given that ‘hyperlocal’ publishing on the Internet is now attracting the attention of policymakers (Ofcom 2012), investors (Radcliffe 2012) and researchers (such as Metzgar et al. 2011) it seems timely to assess the scale of activity of this emerging sector in the UK. This  paper reports on research completed as part of the ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen’ project on behalf of the UK communications regulator Ofcom and outlines the number of active hyperlocal websites and the volume and frequency of stories they produce. Such websites are, by and large, independent of mainstream media organisations and their intended audience is from a specific, often small, geographic area.
The paper reflects on issues in developing a clear definition of what constitutes a hyperlocal website and in conclusion finds that whilst the challenge they pose to the local press might be overstated, their collective output and continued growth is of a scale that warrants continued interest from regulators concerned about the plurality of news sources that citizens are exposed to in their localities. The research goes some way towards identifying a clear baseline against which the further growth of the dynamic
nature of this emerging sector can be measured.

A preliminary report of impressions from the Journalism Entrepreneurship Summit 2015, the first effort to convene key stakeholder groups face-to-face in order to take the pulse of the UK’s journalism entrepreneurship ecosystem. Convened by François Nel of the universities of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Oxford in collaboration with William Perrin and Sarah Hartley of Talk About Local and Javier Luque Martinez of the International Press Institute, the day-long workshop on 27th February 2015 was hosted by Google at Campus London and facilitated by Katie Taylor and Onno Baudouin of UCLan with additional project support from Emma Urjasova of the University of Leeds and reporting by Gemma Walsh of Oxford. CORRESPONDENCE from entrepreneurs, support agencies, researchers, educators and policy makers who would like to collaborate further are particularly welcome and should be sent to: François Nel, Director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at the University of Central Lancashire and Vi...

This review offers an insight into hyperlocal media and the extent of hyperlocal activity in the UK. Hyperlocal media is defined as offering an online news or content service pertaining to a small community such as a town, village or single postcode. Over the last few years, the UK has seen many launches of online local media services that attempt to deliver hyperlocal content. But traditional media providers have found it hard to adjust their high-cost models to a sufficiently local area. Meanwhile, hyperlocal bloggers find it difficult to develop a critical mass of audience and to define the right business models to grow their offers into more sustainable services. Little evidence is publicly available on the success or failure of these services. This review offers an insight into a diverse, creative and emerging sector. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a comprehensive review has been undertaken. We hope that this review will encourage an appetite for a greater u...