Can Untold Stories be told with the demise of local journalism

When the Grenfell Fire tragedy struck, killing 72 people, the world watched and waited to see how the government would react at both the national and local levels. Social Media platforms buzzed with comment, questions and lots of demands for direct and meaningful intervention. But how much did all this internet chatter really matter? How did it impact on public discourse? What evidence that a “Fifth Estate” was gaining traction to add something new and “networked” to the public discourse, so often dominated by political elites and the mainstream press? Was it an effective replacement for a vigilant local media reporting on such a disaster? This paper will compare the local press treatment of the last major fire in London at Lakanal House in Camberwell in 2009 with the response to the Grenfell Fire. Using AI methodologies to analyse Twitter my research has identified that a “Fifth Estate” can exist, but it is not self-evident that this is doing more than amplifying those elite individual and institutional voices that already dominate public discourse more broadly