Does place still matter? Reconfiguring local journalism in the age of platforms: a narrative literature review

Abstract

Local journalism is attracting significant international scholarly attention, particularly considering the digital transformations reshaping the media landscape. This narrative literature review paper aims to synthesise and examine contributions to the discourse on local journalism, focusing on the challenges and opportunities presented by the blurring and intersecting boundaries between geographic, digital, and news production places, which struggle to engage each other. Local journalism, characterised by its inherent proximity, is pivotal to exploring the contemporary complex sense of place. Starting from the concepts of proximity and locality, it will explore the multifaced nature of local journalism, not without definitional ambiguities, especially considering the development of digital media which has inevitably affected conceptions and experiences of "local". In this context, exploring the relationship between journalism and geography is essential. However, the concept of placeification ‒ valuing how digital news environments are become significant places ‒ highlights how digital sites do not replace physical spaces but rather extend the ways in which local journalism creates a sense of place and community. News production sites can also be places of local journalism, becoming meaningful places not only for journalists, but for the community itself. What is noted is that these debates on local journalism struggle to dialogue with each other. Thus, the paper advocates the idea of "situating local journalism" as a theoretical framework for future research, emphasising the importance of examining how local journalism emerges through the intersection of geographic, digital and news production places, to deepen the tensions between adaptation and resistance of local journalism in the context of digital transformation.