The Challenge of Scale

One of the issues I hope to see addressed at today’s summit (and which we explicitly organized the ONA Developing New Voices panel to tackle) is the question of how citizen media works at different geographic scales – national, regional, local and hyperlocal.

How, for instance, does a national citizen media site coalesce its community? Is it only at its best when major news events develop at a specific locale (i.e. the London bombing), or can it draw together issues and people across the broadest possible spectrum? On the other end of the spectrum, how does a hyperlocal site meet the challenge of significance – helping its small community understand how its activities, trends, resonate beyond its primary audience.

I’ll let you know if, and how speakers today and tomorrow at ONA address these challenges.

POSTSCRIPT: None of the panelists at the summit took up these issues. Perhaps at tomorrow's ONA panel. Stay tuned!

POST-POSTSCRIPT (10/6): No one took the bait on this issue at the ONA panel either, despite the way the panelists were sliced geographically. Fortunately, there were lots of good questions, mostly of a practical nature and focused on things like rights and payments for photo submissions, etc.