Data Journalism and Social Media in Hyperlocal Journalism: Telling Local News With Data and Social Media Interaction

Introduction

The digitalization process resulting from technological progress has brought the media and journalism sector into a process of change and transformation. Reporting and journalistic practices are starting to take on new forms with this digital transformation. This process continues as a structure that constantly changes with technological developments (Picard, 2014). These developments in the field of journalism and journalism naturally affect the local media, and many processes such as digital progress, the development of the internet, the emergence of new media, local journalistic practices in collecting and writing news, and deciding which news to select and which to publish are changing. In other words, the internet paves the way for local media to transcend the physical and geographical boundaries that indicate their locality. As a result, local media organizations are breaking their own locality and moving out of their local areas (Franklin, 2006, p.21).

In a way, hyperlocal media has emerged as local media exceeds its limits. Because, unlike the traditional understanding of local media, hyperlocal media can be understood as new forms of digital local media that include the amateurism of local media but offer a technologically opportune alternative to traditional mainstream media (Rodger, 2018, p.857). Dimensionally, hyperlocal media generally serves a population such as a city or town, and its financial strength, sustainability, professionalism and quality in news production processes vary from region to region (Dovbysh, 2020, p.2). Because, in addition to official and larger-scale local media organizations, hyperlocal media organizations represent smaller-scale and more amateur journalism institutions. In this sense, it is different from professional media organizations (Tenor, 2018, p.1065).

Recently, media organizations have been adding the concept of data to their journalistic practices. With the increase in open data sources and requests around the world, the inclusion of data analysis in news content, the rapid spread of presentation techniques with visualization, and data journalism becoming a global phenomenon, it has begun to be widely used in professional journalism practices in recent years and has affected both journalistic practices and social processes (Appelgren et al., 2019, p.1192). The use of data analysis in journalistic practices has a great potential for both the public to act more consciously and for objectivity, trust and accountability (Schudson, 2010, p.107). This situation also manifests itself in local and hyperlocal media organizations. Data journalism is also carried out in these media organizations, albeit to a limited extent, and it has an impact on their own communities.

Although there is an increasing number of research on hyperlocal media, whether or not data use and data journalism practices are used in this field, how they are used and how they are visible remains an issue that is ignored or not thought about much, and is not researched. Although hyperlocal media has a small-scale area and an amateur journalism approach, it also includes data journalism practices as a type of online journalism with the opportunities brought by digitalization. Therefore, analyzes of how digital technologies transform the media environment in a particular region are also gaining importance in terms of hyperlocal media and data journalism.