Places and spaces without news: The contested phenomenon of news deserts

News deserts have gained prominence both in academic literature and policy discussions about local news in recent years. Although there is no agreed definition of the term, it usually refers to the lack of or diminishing availability, access, or use of local news or media in a community. It is seen as a significant phenomenon that highlights inequalities in local news provisions, challenges of local media operations in the digital environment, and issues around the quality of local journalism and the critical information needs of communities. This thematic issue aims to contribute to the field by bringing together different approaches to the topic, considering varied empirical studies and methodological designs, and providing perspectives from countries around the world with different media systems and cultures. The articles in the thematic issue address three broad issues: approaches to studying news deserts, local news production and news deserts, and the impact of news deserts on communities. Overall, the contributions reveal that the presence of a news desert is not a simple question of a locality having or not having a local media outlet. The concept is better understood as processes affecting access and quality of local news involving places, news media outlets and production, communities, and audiences. We end the editorial highlighting areas for further research, including the need for more holistic, conceptual, and comparative work on the topic

Experiencing local news online: audience practices and perceptions

This article explores how audiences experience local news online. It discusses the findings of an empirical study that examined why audiences consumed local news online, what sources they were most likely to access, how important distributing platforms were in local news use, and what users understood by local news. The research had a qualitative design applying diaries as its main method collecting data in the South-East of England in 2016 and 2017. The findings suggest that there is no shared understanding among audience members about what local news is in the digital environment. The study identified three predominant ways in which participants understood local news: as personally relevant or interesting information, as content produced by legacy local media brands, and as community engagement. The study also found that each of the different understandings of local news was linked to particular online news consumption and engagement patterns. The paper argues that audience perceptions of news should be studied alongside motivations for and practices of news engagement and consumption in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of audiences and news in the digital age

Complete Break Up of Ortho Positronium (Ps)- Hydrogenic ion System

The dynamics of the complete breakup process in an Ortho Ps - He+ system including electron loss to the continuum (ELC) is studied where both the projectile and the target get ionized. The process is essentially a four body problem and the present model takes account of the two centre effect on the electron ejected from the Ps atom which is crucial for a proper description of the ELC phenomena. The calculations are performed in the framework of Coulomb Distorted Eikonal Approximation. The exchange effect between the target and the projectile electron is taken into account in a consistent manner. The proper asymptotic 3-body boundary condition for this ionization process is also satisfied in the present model. A distinct broad ELC peak is noted in the fully differential cross sections (5DCS) for the Ps electron corroborating qualitatively the experiment for the Ps - He system. Both the dynamics of the ELC from the Ps and the ejected electron from the target He+ in the FDCS are studied using coplanar geometry. Interesting features are noted in the FDCS for both the electrons belonging to the target and the projectile.Comment: 14 pages,7 figure