The New Work of Composing

I discovered the concept of the hyperlocal as I researched social media that focused on community identity, typically through connections to geophysical locations, a particular region, neighborhood, or town, for example. Simply defined, hyperlocal is what it sounds like: hyper as in linked, and local as in location. As a term, hyperlocal can be applied to a number of new media technologies: GoogleMaps is the most utilized, while eBay, Craigslist, and Redfin apply the concept to classifieds and real estate. Social network sites like outside.in, as well as yelp and placeblogger , focus on connecting users/readers by providing information from the geographic perspective. This translates to hyperlocal content devoted to the stories, the news, and the ins-an-outs of a particular neighborhood, zip code, or group within a specific geographic region. Focusing on geographic location as the locus for community makes logical sense. People care about the places they live; they want to know what is happening around them and they actively seek out information about these places. So, certainly it makes sense to absorb information about locations, but what encourages users to create content? This is a question I asked early in my social media research, in general, not just of sites dedicated to localized content. As I wondered what motivates participation, I became more and more convinced that social media participation was about identity, performance, and conveying and performing our likes and dislikes within social demographics, including geography. So I began to see connections between creating content focused on geographic location or place and composing (performing and conveying) one's identity.