1 Community networks today: Analysing new media for local social networking and community engagement

Community networks that incorporate emerging social media features have the potential to encourage civic engagement and create rich, meaningful social interaction within geographical communities. Recently, new forms of neighbourhood websites have emerged, prompting the question: what are “community networks ” today? New forms of these sites include high-end commercial websites, developed by local newspaper companies and web entrepreneurs. This is in marked contrast to the relatively simple, non-profit community networks that were created by grassroots community organisations in the late 20th century. Content analysis was performed on twelve diverse neighbourhood websites in order to reveal the similarities and differences between their key social, discursive and technological features. This analysis led to an enriched understanding of the contemporary usage of the term “community networks”. The resultant analytical framework provides a useful scaffold for the discussion, comparison and evaluation of community networks. Conscientious analysis of the components of neighbourhood websites, combined with reflection on their correlation with the local communicative ecology, can potentially improve the outcomes of community networking initiatives for not-for-profit organisations, government and industry, across diverse local contexts