King's College London

Researchers carried out an analysis of more than 75,000 articles published online by local newspaper titles in the lead-up to the 2019 election and found that just 6.8 per cent contained information about the upcoming ballot.

Of the 579 local news titles examined between 1-11 December, 2019, (the election was held on 12 December) almost a third of titles published no articles about the election on their websites at all, while just 16 per cent managed to publish at least one article about their local constituency election a day.

The findings were revealed in a study co-authored by Dr Martin Moore, from the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London, and Dr Gordon Neil Ramsay, from the University of Akureyri. It is the first ever audit of almost all articles published by UK local news publishers in the lead up to a national election.

Within the results, there were significant disparities between titles owned by the big publishing groups and hyperlocal titles. At Newsquest, for example, just 5.8 per cent of articles published during the study period related to the election. JPI Media (6.8 per cent) and Reach (6.3 per cent) showed similar levels.

At a group of 66 hyperlocal websites, however, it was 13 per cent.

And the focus of the articles published also varied between the bigger publishers and hyperlocal titles. At Reach, 70 per cent of articles about the election published during the study period were related to a local constituency contest. At JPI Media it was just 31 per cent and at Newsquest it was 76 per cent.

By contrast, 94 per cent of election articles published by hyperlocal titles related to a local constituency.

To conduct the study, the researchers used open-source software Steno, which scraped the 579 websites three times a day to collect information on new articles, headlines, publication time and date, and URL.

The researchers added: “Where previously any attempts to conduct an in-depth analysis of local journalism at any scale would have been limited by the physical difficulties of accessing content, now it is easier than ever to gather, store and analyse local news content in digital form.

“But as the picture comes more and more into focus, the gaps in coverage and reduction in journalistic capacity as a result of digital disruption become ever more apparent.

“This invites a sense of urgency; more research is needed so that the difficulties facing local news organisations and their fulfilment of the information needs of the communities they serve can be better understood.”