As a member of the CRESC my work takes a time-series perspective to researching the changing role of community news media in a digital age. My work adopts a multi-disciplinary approach combining sociology, supply chain management, journalism and digital economics. The research question relates to how local communities will receive their news in the future. I prefer discursive and narrative-based research methods and this will be my approach to this workshop.

Dr Greenhill is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Dr Greenhill has an extensive research and publication list exploring cultural practices of online communities. Dr Greenhill along with Dr Gary Graham is currently researching the changing role of the city, local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age. Both time and space play a major role in the preliminary findings of their research. Thurman (2010) has argued that the advance of the social media/Web 2.0 is eroding away the timeliness, relevance and utility of the local news product. However our research indicates that community news media firms are not a dying breed as predicted by Meyer (2004; 2008), but are evolving over time from product supplier into a multimedia content service provider. In response to the challenges of the internet, many media firms are retaining their community connectivity and therefore influence - for being trusted sources of locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. However, there are concerns that news media organizations are moving online into the (virtual) community space rather than creating their own space. This is potentially detrimental to community connectivity and temporal belonging and raises questions over whether consumers (local community groups) will be willing over time to interact in these spaces or whether they will wish to create/find their own spaces. This paper presents the preliminary findings of research exploring time and the changing role of local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age.