Everybody is a journalist? User participation in hyperlocal news media in Sweden

Abstract

In the age of downsizing and declining of local legacy media, hyperlocal publishing has attracted sustained interest from the news industry, investors and policy makers, as well as consumers and researchers (e.g. Barnett and Townend 2015; Williams et al. 2015). Hyperlocal news operations are often presented as a reaction to a perceived market failure and a solution to fill the gaps of declining legacy media; to meet a need for locally oriented news (Kapius et al. 2010; Metzgear et al. 2011). In particular, hyperlocal publishing emphasis a stronger relying on user participation than traditional media (Kapius et al. 2010; Paulussen and D’herr 2013), ranging from user-generated content in form of tips, blogs, comments to contribution through different forms of civic and participatory journalism. Other studies on user engagement have, however, found a low level of uptake of user-generated content among both journalists and consumers (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein 2013; McCollough et al. 2017)
By using methodological triangulation – surveys (probability sample from the national SOM survey, and of all hyperlocal media actors in Sweden), interviews (with all municipalities in Sweden, and selected hyperlocal actors), and content analysis (of hyperlocal Swedish Facebook groups) – the present study examines to what extent users participate in the content production of hyperlocal operations and to what extent they fill a perceived news gap. The users’, the producers’ and the municipalities’ perspectives are taken into account.
The results show that most of the content in hyperlocal media is produced by the owner(s), often a sole individual with a background as a professional journalist, now working on volunteer-like basis. Thus, “amateur reporting” does not account for a significant part of the content in Swedish hyperlocal media, but more engagement and submissions from the audience is encourage and wanted. Additionally, looking at the population as whole, the citizens state that their participation to content creation are low in analogues media outlets, but somewhat higher in online and social media. Looking more closely at local Facebook groups, these have moved conditions forward, toward a more ideal setting of participation. At hyperlocal level, Facebook groups function as a good environment for user participation, although they do just partly fill the function of legacy mass media. Thus, the thesis “everybody is a journalists” is a truth with modification, both with regards to breadth of content and engagement. Hyperlocal media do not currently secure the future of journalism and news reporting, but nonetheless provide good conditions for improvement of the news media landscape.