"Almost the entire county is being left outside" : Inhabitants of Vilhelmina talks about local journalism

In the light of the problems the media industry are struggling with, local news reporting is only one of the challenges the news organizations are facing. When local editors is being moved to the cities the tie with the local community is being severed. The aim of this study has been to analyze how the inhabitants of Vilhelmina municipality talks about their experiences of local journalism. With methodological inspiration from the Critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study examined the discourses of local journalism, social media, journalism's role and municipal policy. The theorectical framework consisted theories of media and democracy, convergence culture and discourse theory. The survey was conducted with four focus groups interviews. The focus groups were divided in different cathegories based on the participants experiences, ages and employment. The groups consisted of politicians, senior citizens, municipal employees and younger students. Results showed that some of the groups put high value in physical presence and that the absence of local editors were seen as a problem. The importance of local journalism were unmistakable and the groups talked about local journalism in similar ways. Different opinions mostly occured when it came to discourses about the importance and effects of social media. Another discourse that were identified were the discourse about the political climate in Vilhelmina. The changing media landscape were seen as one of the main factors when it came to conflicts and misunderstandings that have characterized the debate in the last years. In summary, a changed media landscape can not only be seen as a threat. In fact, in small municipalities like Vilhelmina, technological developments might be one of the solutions when it comes to maintain local journalism. The biggest problem is rather the lack of investigative journalism that occur when local editors is disappearing