Not Quite Filling the Void: Comparing the Perceptions of Local Online Groups and Local Media Pages on Facebook

DOI

With the steady closure of local newspapers, technology platforms are attempting to fill the void by providing community forums or neighborhood apps where users read and share local information. This study investigates how local online groups are perceived relative to more traditional local news outlets, and compares the community benefits provided by each. Based on prior theoretical contributions, we developed a framework for measuring the benefits of local information presence on individual-level pro-community attitudes. In our experiment N=170, we asked frequent Facebook users living in four U.S. cities to start following local news pages or local online groups on Facebook for one month, and compared their perceptions of quality and changes in pro-community attitudes. We find that posts from local news pages are perceived to be of significantly higher quality than posts from local online groups. However, neither following new local news pages or local groups led to significant changes in pro-community attitudes during our study period. We discuss implications for the future study of local news in a changing media ecology.