Kara Hadge, a Georgetown grad student just completed her thesis, called “Networked Neighborhood,” on hyperlocal media and Columbia Heights. It’s pretty interesting stuff, on how blogs, Twitter and more affect how people get local news and if that makes them more involved, plus some on the communications infrastructure and actors in the neighborhood.
In short, it finds that people who contribute to hyperlocal media (blogs, Twitter, etc) are more engaged and involved than people who don’t, people who follow hyperlocal media are more informed than those who don’t, and interestingly, that long-term residents are more involved with hyperlocal media. That sort of disproves the idea that new residents only use the internet to be involved in the community. Of course, that depends on the methodology, and some of it is a little too technical for me to fully grasp.
Aside form the thesis itself (which is worth a read) there’s also some cool things she put together, like a timeline of Columbia Heights history, a timeline showing new blog and twitter posts about the neighborhood, and a list of all the hyperlocal media in the neighborhood.
Always nice to see some intellectual work on our neighborhood. Plus using some statistics she analyzes which kinds of hyperlocal media are the highest level of centrality — ask Wikipedia for more about that.
What do you think of Kara’s findings?
