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Social and Behavioral Sciences
China; community news; Convergent Media; media ecology; news desert; social media; WeCha
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Local News Deserts In China: The Role Of Social Media And Personal Communication Networks, Zixue Tai, Bai He, Jianping Liu
Local News Deserts In China: The Role Of Social Media And Personal Communication Networks, Zixue Tai, Bai He, Jianping Liu
Journalism and Media Faculty Publications
The field of local news is often associated with news deserts, commonly defined as geo‐based communities without news‐ papers or other legacy media as providers of locally oriented news and civic information. This phenomenon is expanding in global society due to the diminishing presence of newspapers at moments of accelerated digitization. This study examines the multiplex nature of news deserts in rural and suburban areas in China. Data were collected through a multi‐methods approach combining two focus groups and 44 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. Patterns of engagement among inter‐ viewees reveal that smartphone‐based social media applications and digital platforms function as …