A Renewed Focus on the Quality of Local News and Information

Bill Dutton Information Communication and the Social Sciences, Internet and Everyday Life, Internet Studies, Research and Learning, Shaping the Internet, Social Informatics, Social Issues, Social Science Research

The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program is organizing an event focused on News Cities: The Next Generation of Healthy Informed Communities on August 16, starting at 10:30 a.m. eastern time, which will be an interactive livestream.  The Twitter hashtag for this event is #FOCAS10. Their aim is to ‘develop a set of actionable steps to improve the information health of communities.’ This builds on work of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, and renewed focus in the UK on the role of the Internet and the media in local communities. This includes work at the Rowntree Foundation, as well as a local TV review launched by the coalition government. All to say that the local is coming into a sharper focus for research, policy and practice.From my perspective, the local is indeed the new frontier of the global Internet.

Comments are most welcome