This is a cross-posting from the website for a new project that the research centre is involved with – ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen‘. A key research strand within it is about Hyperlocal publishing in the UK. It’s early days for the project but already its outputs are generating interest

I was pleased to be asked to talk at the BBC’s Connecting Communities conference on 24th May 2012. I used my 10 minute slot to announce the findings of some research this strand of the Creative Citizenship project had been doing into the scale and scope of Hyperlocal publishing.

Below are the audio and slides (also as PDF) from the event. There’s a report to follow (once proofed and tidied up) which outlines the methodology in detail and I’ll share the spreadsheets in due course also. But for the meantime, here’s the presentation and below that the main findings:

Sample

• The research sampled a list of 432 active websites 8th till 18th May 2012.
• ‘Active’ was defined as a website having posted at least once in the 5 months prior to the sample period.
• 313 published at least one article in the sample period.
• 119 did not publish an article in the sample period.

Publishing

• The average number of posts of those sites that published was 12.2 posts per site.
• The median number of posts of those sites that published was 7.
• 3819 items were published in total
• 75% of the items are produced by a third of the sites
• 58% of items were produced by 20% of the sites.
• 39 sites produced just one story
• 133 (42.6%) sites produced 5 or less items. These were responsible for 9.3% of the posts

Frequency

• Overall, an average of 15 items per hour were produced by Hyperlocal wesbites.
• During weekday daytimes this average rose to 24 items per hour, close to one story every two minutes.

Geographic distribution

• 400 sites were located in England, 15 in Wales, 13 in Scotland and 3 in Northern Ireland
• Collectively, London Borough’s 48 websites that produced a story during the sample period produced 483 items
• Birmingham’s 15 sites that published during the sample period produced 92 items