Section ID Primary
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BACK TO LOCAL MEDIA
“Information services provided by the municipalities cannot replace independent local journalism. […] Resources are constantly flowing out of the system that can only be rebuilt in the future with a great deal of additional effort. The longer we wait, the more advanced this structural dismantling becomes.”
- Grubenmann & Weber, 2022, p. 29, translated from German
| Local communication is made up of the communication of the local media and the local administration. Current developments are shaking up the former symbiotic relationship between the two players – and in many places a relationship of dependency between the local media and the local administration is emerging (e.g. financially). The strong development of their own communication instruments by local administrations seems to make local media partially obsolete. In fact, however, the local media, like the entire media system, have a different task than the administration in their communication: they should represent the fourth estate in a democracy, research, report, inform and be critical. If this role in the state is lost, this poses a long-term threat to a functioning democracy. The results of our research show the extent of the current discrepancy between local media and municipalities regarding the assessment of the importance of local media for the municipalities (see Figure 1).
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Statement: The municipalities are dependent on the local media to fulfill their information mandate. (Local media: N= 162; municipalities: N=402) (Burger et al., 2023, p. 71)