A Panel Study of Community Attachment and Local News Media Use.

Numerous studies have demonstrated a relationship between community attachment and local news media use. However, despite calls for panel studies to help determine the direction of causality in this relationship, there is little in the way of evidence beyond cross-sectional surveys, and these surveys are most often limited to single communities. In order to help provide empirical data to help settle the longstanding debate about the direction of this relationship, we conducted a four-wave national panel study with repeated measurement of community attachment and local news media use across waves two, three and four, with antecedent demographic and structural variables measured in the first wave. Cross-sectional analyses confirmed the expected relationship between news use and community attachment, but more conservative panel analyses with control for prior levels of outcome variables indicated no significant relationships. An additional prediction about the role of community size as a moderator of the relationship between local news use and community attachment was not supported. We discuss methodological and theoretical reasons for the lack of support for these hypotheses and make suggestions for alternative study designs for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]