| Digital technology innovation has made the media environment extremely complex. Mass communication tools are emerging endlessly and becoming smarter and smarter. Ordinary people tend to use the Internet to get information and share their creation. Furthermore, they are even willing to participate in the communication. With the arrival of participatory journalism, information consumers who acted as a negative role in the past have become active. Many new media startups have sprung up in recent years, and one of them is hyperlocal news websites.Hyperlocal news media has blossomed all around America for several years. Being an significant and special journalism phenomenon in America, hyperlocal journalism has already been noticed and researched by many foreign scholars. However, these new startups haven't attracted the attention of Chinese researchers, almost empty. This study compares hyperlcoal news sites with local traditional news sites or legacy media sites in the same geographic areas. The study intends to determine how the hyperlocal news sites differ in the possibility, convenience and participants'controllability. The study also discusses social and market factors which might affect citizen's participation.With content analysis, the result suggests that hyperlocal news site are more likely to invite users'contributions than legacy newspaper sites. Also, hyperlocal news sites pay more attention to users'behavior of participating. In addition, both hyperlocal news sites and legacy newspaper websites have provided convenient tools for people to distribute their news and information. |
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