This study took a snapshot of a robust phenomenon – specifically, the development of hyperlocal community news sites – that is changing and growing week by week.
J-Lab created a questionnaire intended to capture as much data as possible through in-depth interviews in the summer of 2006 with founders, owners or operators of a diverse group of 31 citizen media sites. We supplemented that data with an online, 60-question survey in the fall of 2006. This was not a random-sample survey; we wanted data from people who were readers of or contributors to hyperlocal news sites with citizen-generated content.
We specifically targeted readers, contributors and operators of the nearly 500 citizen media sites we could identify at the time. We asked them to suggest other possible participants and e-mailed the survey to them as well. In addition, we asked the 18,000 recipients of our J-Flash e-mail newsletter to forward it to citizen journalists they knew.
Overall, 191 people responded to most or all of our 60 questions; 149 of those respondents said they had contributed to a citizen media site in some way; others had read sites with citizen-generated content.