The View from the Hinterlands:Political News Content in Two Small Cities.

This paper explores the content of the local media, looking for story frames, use of sources, and mobilizing information that may enable and empower citizens to participate in politics. To this end, the daily and weekly newspapers and local television news in Duluth, MN and Green Bay, WI are analyzed, with data collected in February and July 2003, respectively. These two cases were chosen because both cities have very high levels of participation relative to the national average. Recent research has demonstrated that perhaps there is more to the decision to participate in politics than socio-economic status and ideological commitment. In fact, communication scholars have found that media use, strength of community ties, and characteristics of a person’s social networks are better able to predict participation than the demographic models relied upon in political science. This paper builds on this recent line of inquiry, exploring the ways in which the media may contribute to participation in a community. The focus here is on local media as those are the media used by the majority of Americans as the primary sources of news. In addition, this paper explores ways in which the media vary as the local context varies, analyzing the differences across the two cases, and discussing ways these cases may vary from other locales. This study is important because it breaks new ground in exploring the content of media found to be positively related to political participation, and focuses on the local media and variations in media environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]