I- PARÁMETROS DE AMPLITUD (medidos en μm)

Interviewing was the primary form of data collection with a total of 27 hyperlocal

operators questioned mainly by telephone during two rounds of data collection. Contact was made with research participants prior to the data collection period by either email or LinkedIn when my biographical background as a former journalist was detailed. Having gained their agreement to be a research participant, the data collection was conducted over a two-year period between the summers of 2015 and 2017 and the interviews recorded and transcribed. Conference reports were used as additional sources of data, to provide topics for interviews and to contextualise the hyperlocal sector in relation to the overall local media ecosystem and show how it had evolved. The final event was the Building the future of community journalism conference in January 2018, when the representative body for the sector was launched; the Independent Community News Network (ICNN). Press reports, during 2018, were included during the writing up period of the thesis. In the empirical chapters when a participant’s quotation is used, the notation I:1 or I:2 followed by the date it took place identifies whether it is from the first or second interview. For those participants where one interview was held, only the date is stated. This is to clarify at what stage during data collection the statement was made.

The first interviews were conducted in 2015/16 and the transcriptions returned to the interviewees shortly before the second interview in summer 2017. The first interview focused on a list of themes (See appendix 3), rather than set questions, with a view to addressing the research questions and identifying themes as part of the Grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Birks and Mills, 2015). The interview began with me asking how the interviewee had become involved with the hyperlocal. This open-ended approach meant that on most occasions very few prompts were required, from myself, for the interviewee to ‘tell the story’ and arrive at the topic areas that I was pursuing. While they were speaking, I would simultaneously make notes in a journalist’s notepad adding prompts to myself to pursue a particular line of

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questioning in response to something they had said, or if they had not covered a particular theme. I also interjected if something needed clarification, or when the conversation floundered. During the interview process participants’ would often refer to my background as a journalist and this would lead to a reflexive conversation about practices or experience with legacy media, particularly if we had a shared professional background (Plesner, 2011: 471).

Audio recordings were transcribed and the transcripts returned to the recipients shortly before the second interview; this enabled interviewees to refresh their memories by reading what they had said the previous year. They were then able to see how the hyperlocal had evolved and could to update me on the changes. Transcripts of the second interviews were returned to the participants in autumn 2017. There were four exceptions to this practise Martin Johnson, Jamie Summerfield, Dave Harte and Will Perrin. Stockport Today was already at the point of closing when the first interview was conducted since Martin had been offered a full-time job and had decided to take it, the interview nevertheless generated useful data and confirmed the messiness of qualitative research (Holliday, 2016: 99). Likewise, Jamie Summerfield of A Little Bit of Stone announced during the first interview that he too was leaving for a lifestyle change.

Therefore, second interviews were not conducted with either of these participants

because they had left the hyperlocals by the time the second interviews were conducted.

The remaining two were reducing their hyperlocal activities and had already provided information to satisfy the research questions. During the first interview Dave Harte (2017) suggested that he would try and find a new operator for Bournvillevillage.com, having completed his doctoral study of hyperlocal his professional focus was changing.

By email he advised that he had not updated the site for some months but had not found another operator. William Perrin founder of Kingscrossenvironment.com said during the first interview that the site was in a less active phase of its life and was just ‘ticking over’

with occasional contributions. A year later he did not respond to an email request for a second interview and in January 2018 closed the hyperlocal advocacy group Talk About local (TAL).

At the outset, an ethical decision had to be made and participants’ consent gained, whether to anonymise the them and reveal sensitive information, or conversely to name them and not use anything sensitive. After much deliberation, I decided not to

anonymise the participants because I considered that in such a small and varied sector, where so many people knew each other, it would be almost impossible to avoid

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identifying them. Even if I did not name the interviewee, much of the information divulged in the interview could inadvertently lead to identification. The views of many interviewees were also openly published, therefore interviewees were given complete control over the transcripts and could redact anything. These were not personal interviews of vulnerable people of the type conducted by Merrill and West (2009) and several had been quoted publicly talking about their operations (Coulter, 2013; Jackman, 2013; Ponsford, 2013;

Cook, 2018; Coulter et al, 2018). Although, several interviewees took me into their confidence and told me sensitive material ‘off the record’; a journalistic term to indicate that they didn’t want the quotation published. I respected their wishes, as I had in similar circumstances as a journalist, and redacted the passages concerned. I appreciated their confidence in telling me sensitive material, such as costings for their operation, because even though ‘not for publication’ it provided useful contextual material to help me

position my research.

The second round of interviews investigated themes which had arisen from the coding (explained in 2:6) of the first interview to discover how the research area had changed.

The focus of these interviews began by asking each individual where they thought their hyperlocal was currently positioned in terms of the local media ecology. There were changes which had occurred in local media at both the meso and macro level between the first and second interviews, on which I sought their views. The first of these was the appointment of IMPRESS, the Independent Monitor for the Press, as the only

government recognised regulator. This organisation had attracted the membership of a number of hyperlocals, despite being largely shunned by the mainstream media who were supporting a rival regulator IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation which, critically, was not officially regulated.

A second area of questioning surrounded the launch of the BBC Local Democracy Reporter Scheme to which several hyperlocals had applied. The third area of

questioning was to seek views on a new representative body for the hyperlocal sector the Independent Community News Network (ICNN) which received its ‘soft launch’ in August 2017.

Both the representative body and the BBC scheme took a year to reach fruition. I was present at a consultation meeting in July 2016 at Cardiff University, organised by the Centre for Community Journalism (C4CJ) which sought input from operators for both schemes (Scarbrough, 2016). I eventually attended the launch of the ICNN in January 2018. These initiatives highlighted changes in the local media ecology, vis-à-vis the

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sector’s relationship with mainstream media, which fed into the theme of marginality.

During the data collection periods, I also attended hyperlocal conferences and

conducted interviews with three representatives of meso level organisations, that had provided support to the sector: Kathryn Geels of Nesta, and Emma Meese of C4CJ and Douglas White of Carnegie Trust UK.

Initially the intention was to conduct face-to-face interviews wherever possible, but the geographical spread of the provisions made this unviable on the grounds of cost and time. The provisions were spread across hundreds of miles with Port Talbot in Wales, Manchester in the north-west, Lincoln in the north-east and The Isle of Wight on the south coast being at the most extreme points (see Appendix 1). Also, as it transpired, many of the respondents had full-time jobs in addition to their hyperlocal commitments so telephone interviews suited them better. Eventually only four interviews were face-to-face: both interviews with David Wimble, first interviews with David Shafford and James Hatts. The remainder were recorded telephone interviews. Vijay Jain, David’s partner on Dartford Living, was geographically close enough to meet face-to-face but he expressed a preference for a telephone interview because it fitted better with his work

commitments.

Telephone interviews have traditionally been a widely used research tool for quantitative surveys and Robert Groves provides a summary of telephone survey methodology identifying its strengths and weaknesses (1990). His focus on telephone surveying of domestic households, means that many of the scenarios he envisaged involving : ‘coverage error, nonresponse [sic] error, sampling error and measurement error’ either do not relate to my research strategy or refer to problems that were ‘of their time’ such as coverage error arising from households without access to a telephone (1990: 237); a situation that seems barely credible in the current ‘mobile’ era. However there are aspects that remain relevant such as establishing the “authority” of the

requester, Groves suggests that such authority was ‘typically communicated by advance letters’ (1990: 225). In my case this was done via email or LinkedIn messaging. He suggests that being granted an interview in response, may depend on the exchange relationship between the two parties : ‘The concept of “reciprocation” is similar to the basic tenets of social exchange theory whereby interaction would be preferred with actors who have previously provided some benefit to the subject’ (1990: 225). My previously discussed ‘insider’ status (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 86-87) as a journalist, may have conferred some ‘authority’ as did the status of the university I was

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representing; although it is a testament to the participants’ altruism that they were prepared to donate their time to further my research.

One of Groves’ primary discussions about the limitations of telephone interview

strategies concerns ‘reduced channel capacity’, or the: ‘smaller set of messages that can be communicated in the medium than in face-to-face communication’ (1990: 226).

Novick, (2008) and Irvine (2010) indicate that there is an implicit bias against telephone interviewing for qualitative research because of the absence of visual cues. Both they and Groves identify this as a weakness, because non-verbal cues are credited with aiding communication, conveying subtle layers of meaning and considered important for building rapport (Irvine, 2010:1). Although, Groves suggests the presence of: ‘no

increased errors in the quality of communication of verbal material in the audio-only condition’ (1990: 227). Irvine also indicates:

Projects which seek relatively simple or descriptive data may not require

immersion in the participants’ environment or a level of rapport that encourages personal revelations or extended reflective accounts (2010:6).

This was a situation which I considered reflected my research, I was not seeking information of a deeply revealing, personal nature so establishing non-verbal communication with participants was less critical. Although I would dispute Irvine’s assertion that that establishing rapport in a telephone interview situation is difficult. On several occasions interviewees voluntarily offered sensitive information about advertising income; confident of the professional relationship we shared as journalists they also told me information ‘off the record’ which I subsequently redacted from transcripts.

There was also a degree of autobiographical inscription (LeMenager & Hebdige, 2013) in this method, since during my career as a journalist the majority of interviews were conducted via the telephone. It could be that the degree of openness from my participants’, was possible because the majority of them were also either journalists, media professionals or business people (see Chapter 4: Participants’ professional background and their motivation for independent hyperlocal publishing ) and like myself were comfortable with conducting interviews via the telephone. For example, Emma Cooper was former head of telesales advertising at the Bristol Evening Post so telephone communication was natural to her. Vijay Jain’s work involved a lot of

conference calls and as stated he requested a telephone interview. Mobile phones are ubiquitous among the professional community and they are more comfortable with

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telephone communication; this arguably makes it easier for contemporary researchers to establish rapport via the medium.

Novick suggests that: ‘telephone interviewing must employ highly structured, closed ended questions’ (2008; 4) although in a journalistic setting the opposite is true. My interviews were ‘negotiations’ (Plesner, 2011), in the journalistic convention, as opposed to structured interviews specifically because I was pursuing an open-ended questioning policy. This conversational style allowed interviewees to fully explore an issue; the encounters thus produced more diverse data than I could have predicted. In my experience the absence of visual clues in telephone interviews would make structured interviews more problematic, because interrupting an interviewee to ask a

predetermined question proved difficult without the benefit of eye-contact. There were several occasions where I was forced to ‘talk over someone’ to change the direction of the interview, because it was entering a sensitive area or one which did not relate to my research questions.

The acknowledged benefits of telephone interviews are their flexibility, cost

effectiveness and ability to conduct interviews across a large geographical area (Groves, 1990; Musselwhite et al, 2007; Novick, 2008; Irvine, 2010). Without the flexibility of the medium, I consider that, some of the interviews would not otherwise have taken place, because of the demands of journalism on the respondent’s lifestyles. Groves identifies that: ‘telecommunication is a substitute for travel’ (1990: 224). For example, the second interview with Emma Gunby (October 10, 2017), who also ran a social media marketing business, took several weeks to arrange. On the afternoon we were scheduled to speak, she had to report on a major breaking story for her hyperlocal West Kirby Today. After frantic exchanges of emails and texts, we had to rearrange the interview at the last moment. Richard Coulter, who has several freelance roles, spoke to me on both occasions between meetings and Michael Casey spoke to me while out in the community covering reporting jobs; there was an hour’s break in the first interview because he had to conduct an interview himself.

In terms of measurement error Groves proposes that the ‘quantity of the response is reduced on open questions’ in telephone interviewing when compared to face-to-face scenarios (1978: 259; 1990: 234); because of the faster pace to telephone interviews.

He suggests that this is due to the: ‘elimination of extraneous conversation which sometimes occurs in face-to-face interviews’ (1978: 259).

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I did not find that the open-ended style of my interviewing curtailed the opportunity for discussion and would agree with Novick (2008: 4) that telephone interviews do not have to be short. I allowed the length of interviews to be dictated by the participant and their availability. My first interviews ranged between 15 minutes for Emma Cooper and Daniel Ionescu to more than an hour for Rachel Howells and Richard Gurner.

Since I was conducting a qualitative open-ended interview, rather than following a pre-determined script, I was happy for the length of the conversation to be dictated by the respondent. I was acutely aware that they were donating their time and I considered that the value of the interview hinged on the quality of the data rather than the quantity.

The second interviews were all shorter because their purpose was to update the original situation, so topics such as professional background did not have to be re-examined. As stated, all interviews were set up by prior to contact, either by email or LinkedIn, at a time to suit the participant and I was happy to reschedule at short notice if the pre-arranged time and day did not suit them. Interviewees were sent a copy of the transcript and in a few cases quotes were anonymised, either because the interviewee had been speaking ‘off the record’ or they were divulging what I considered to be sensitive information.

Feminist approaches underpinned the interview encounter because, as predicted, there was a large degree of reciprocity (Oakley, 1981; Cotterill, 1992), with interviewees also asking me questions which I answered. David Wimble asked me if I knew that

newspaper pages were printed in blocks of four; I assured him that as a former ‘stone sub’ who oversaw newspaper production at printing sites, I was familiar with printing processes.

Simon Perry was interested to know about my experience of the difficulty of securing national advertising, while working on equestrian magazines, and we discussed the subject quite extensively. Also, since many of the research participants’ were of similar professional background to myself, communications between us at times lapsed into a form of ‘newsroom shorthand’ with regard the working practices of legacy media, particularly print; an example of Plesner’s ‘shared common vocabularies’ (2011: 471).

Paul Breeden, South Bristol Voice, appeared to have only one franchise but had followed a traditional legacy media of creating initially two and latterly three editions using the same masthead; a concept with which I was familiar since it was prevalent during the 1980s and 90s.

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The day-to-day working practices of Annemarie Flanagan, Sue Choularton, Michael Casey, David Jackman, Emma Gunby and Paul Breeden were all very familiar to me as a former reporter. Paul Breeden was also heavily involved in the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), of which I was an active member between 1979 until starting my doctoral studies in 2014, so I pursued that angle in my questioning with him. During interview, Rachel Howells also mentioned sitting through a never-ending series of NUJ

‘chapel’ meetings: ‘So we’d been sitting in these union meetings for what felt like decades, but probably more likely to be about two or three years.’ This was a situation I could empathise with having taken redundancy from Guthrie Newspapers Ltd in 1994 and endured a similar 18-month lead time to actually leaving their employment. After transcriptions were made of each interview, the material was coded to provide themes, a process which will be explained in the following section.