Abstract
This book is the most recent contribution to a long line of research, stretching back to early studies by the Chicago School of Sociology, on how news circulates in urban contexts. But there is a difference in the context studied here, one that marks an important shift for this literature. The difference can be summed up in two words: the Internet. The authors mark this difference in the title of the book with the term ‘post-industrial’. By this term, they mean to denote the transition in the city under investigation, Leeds, England, from a relatively stable industrial past to a more uncertain post-industrial present (and future). As one reads the text, however, it becomes clear that the Internet and the digital tools it affords represent the key difference between ‘news ecologies’ – a key term for the authors – of the past and the one under review here. In their efforts to articulate this difference, the authors have produced the most systematic investigation of the diffusion of news in a newly digital environment.
Methodologically, it is an impressive exercise. To track the flow of news, the authors employ the following methods: digital research canvassing social media feeds (primarily Facebook and Twitter) that include ‘Leeds’ geocodes, 17 ‘scoping interviews’ (p. 10) with individuals working for mainstream and alternative media outlets, a content analysis of all news produced over the course of the chosen week by local news providers, eight focus groups with local media users and audiences, and a survey of a representative sample of Leeds citizens. It is no wonder that the research required the work of eight authors!
The authors lay out their empirical findings over eight chapters. Their content analysis finds that news outlets generally focus on local news, alternating between ‘celebratory’ and ‘social disorder’ frames (p. 41). Furthermore, voices of ordinary people seem to be amply represented in this news, and citizen news providers – primarily bloggers – do not compete with mainstream news outlets so much as complement them. ‘Citizen news practices’, the authors write, ‘play a role in translating and making sense of news stories …’ (p. 145).
The authors’ data on residents show that audiences seem to appreciate local news and to bond with local news providers. However, although they express a strong public service mission (p. 125), local news providers pay less attention to civic matters, perhaps in part because local audiences register less interest in this subject (p. 79). Moreover, audiences, most of whom attend to the news in a ‘fleeting’ and ‘episodic’ manner (p. 98), do not seem to make a distinction between news distributed via interpersonal networks and media outlets. Rather, the news appears to them as an undifferentiated flow of stories, some told by their friends and some told by professional journalists.
In the end, the authors argue that the ‘mediated city’ of today is a more ‘chaotic’ environment than in the past, one in which many important connections – between individuals living in different parts of the community, between individuals and civic life, between the public and its representatives – are not quite made. Local policymakers ‘wants to engage with citizens, but [are] not sure what engagement means or how to make it work …’ Professional journalists ‘have a serious commitment to “the public interest,” but are torn between the tasks of empowering citizens who want to confront political authority and being constrained by a principle of impartiality …’ For their part, citizens do not feel well represented by, and are deeply suspicious of, politicians or journalists (pp. 202, 203). The authors conclude, ‘If a news ecology is to be regarded as more than a transmission belt for the dissemination of passing stories, as a foundation for the enactment of efficacious civic practices, there is quite evidently something wrong’ (p. 205). The authors end with an appeal to greater sharing of governance between policymakers and citizens, a collaboration in part made possible by a more civic-minded use of digital tools.
Anyone familiar with prior research in this area, and who has kept up with recent research published in the journals, will not be surprised by many of these findings. Indeed, a more explicit discussion of how these findings align with those of prior research might have been helpful. Moreover, there is a question, one to which the authors are sensitive, about how comparable Leeds is with other urban contexts.
These issues aside, the volume presents a truly impressive piece of scholarship, one that brings together multiple sources of data in a compelling way. Indeed, it may be that the book’s biggest contribution is the methodology itself, which stands as a model for similar studies elsewhere.