ONLINE NEWS USERS’ SENSE OF COMMUNITY

The idea of geography is fundamental to local newspapers, both in the sense of community news and news from a community perspective. It has been suggested that “geography is dead.” This idea was tested through a self-administered mail survey of a sample of adults living in Maricopa County, Arizona, using geographic and online senses of community measures to determine the importance of geography in today's Internet-rich environment and determine if geography is really “dead.” The analysis focused on evaluating the mean sense of community measures among groups, and examining the use of newspaper weblogs in light of the print newspaper's coverage of a particular geographic area. Results rebuff suggestions that geography is “dead” and indicate that respondents are still attached to their geographic communities. In the struggle to find new models of journalism, newspapers must find a way to remain geographically relevant in print and on the Web.

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