Reciprocity and the hyperlocal journalist

Harte, David ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2506-1438, Williams, Andy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9603-4309 and Turner, Jerome 2017. Reciprocity and the hyperlocal journalist. Journalism Practice 11 (2-3) , pp. 160-176. 10.1080/17512786.2016.1219963

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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 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.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Hyperlocal news; local news; community; citizen journalism; reciprocal journalism; reciprocity; journalism practice
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis (Routledge): SSH Titles
ISSN:	1751-2786
Funders:	Arts and Humanities Research Council
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 August 2016
Date of Acceptance:	31 July 2016
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 23:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/93453

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