Collaborating in a Pandemic: Adapting Local News Infrastructure to Meet Information Needs

Abstract

As media outlets around the globe seek to play a constructive role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study looks at how local news initiatives in the U.S. city of Philadelphia attempted to respond to the information needs of marginalized communities. Using a communication infrastructure theory framework, it draws from focus groups with residents of two neighborhoods—one majority Black and one majority Latinx—as well as participant observation of and interviews with journalists in a city-wide local journalism collaboration and two community-centered projects. Through this it explores how the crisis affects links between local media and organizations, and how having community-centered projects and infrastructure for collaboration facilitated the circulation of information within and between storytelling networks in the region.

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