Community as object or action? Reconceptualising the purpose and practices of local media and journalism

Corporately-owned local media and journalism are in crisis and solutions are being sought to maintain delivery of trusted local news and information to sustain local de- mocracy. This paper demonstrates that the culture, values and practices of the field have been informed – even determined – by that ownership model and that emergent and established independent local media are questioning and renegotiating journalistic practices and values. But they are hindered by the lack of a conceptual scaffolding which makes sense of the project. This paper argues that the conceptualisation of ‘community’ as object, geographically-located groups sharing symbolic, discursive or kinship ties, has informed the habitus of the field. Furthermore, the focus on journal- ism’s role in democratic processes has concealed value inherent in wider public bene- fits which local media facilitate. The paper applies an alternative conceptual lens of ‘community’ as action, process, practice (Walkerdine and Studdert 2012) to develop a theoretical paradigm which can better inform and explain the transformations local media and journalism are undergoing. The paper tests the efficacy of this reconceptual- ization by applying it to the analysis of five case studies of successful, innovative, local media organisations undertaken between 2015 and 2020.