The glue between us:

GeoMedia2017

2017/05/11

• The role and significance of the future local press

• Challenge: Reaching them all!

The glue between us:

The Local Press and Facebook’s Significance for Local Attachment

• Generation gaps: Facebook as the future integrative local force?

• Creating sub-spaces for local interaction rather than binding the community together?

Malene Paulsen Lie

malene.p.lie@nord.no

Thank you for your attention!

The Integrative Local Press

Decentralized Press Structure (Høst, 2015)

Readership<-> attachment (Stamm, 1985; McLeod, 1996; Elvestad, 2008)

Binding the community together

”The press (...) bind society together and create a local and national identity. All societies are dependent on the existence of a set of cultural patterns that each person knows about (...) Thus, the press... is not limited to politics, it has a cultural function as well (NOU 2000:15, p. 125, my translation).

• Global Village (McLuhan, 1964)

• No sense of place (Meyrowitz, 1985)

• The local: No longer an anchoring point of place identity?

• Global communities of interest

• Might as well be used to nurture personal relationships and networks locally (and virtually) (Tomlinson, 2001)

Findings:

Facebook and the Relations between People

The Local Press and the Relationship between Individuals and Places

• Most interviewees subscribe to their local newspaper

• A majority of the interviewees are users
• Main local attachment: Social network, family and friends
• Social space for nurturing such relationships
• Facilitating face-to-face interactions

• Age

• Residence time

• Strong emotional bonds

I do not use the chat to talk. For me it is a tool to plan something with someone. It is not important to have numbers on the phone anymore, because everybody is there [on Facebook] (...) Facebook is important to tie people together through conversations (Man28)

• Facilitating place-based interactions

• Empirical examples of online communities of interest being formed locally

• Local press: Identity based glue between individuals and place

The local newspaper gives a pure connection and you feel that you are a part of something (...) I subscribed to the local paper whilst living in Oslo as a way to keep in touch and to see what was going on at home (Woman46)

• Facebook: The interpersonal glue between people of local communities

Embodiment: roots, heart, genetics

Mirroring a stronger identity to place

• Supplementing functions

• 29 in-depth interviews

"Local representations"

• Pictures, information, news mirroring/not mirroring the local identity of the inhabitants
• The content reflect my identity (readers)
• The content does not represent me (non-readers)

• Between 17 and 84 years of age

• Smaller rural community and a middle sized Norwegian city