Book overview. This edited collection explores theoretical and practical questions about multimodal, digital production through lenses of rhetoric/composition, digital writing studies, English studies, and the humanities.
Abstract. As a term, hyperlocal can be applied to a number of new media technologies, GoogleMaps being the most utilized. This chapter explores how we, as social media users, compose ourselves through place narratives, narratives that take the form of hyperlocal content.
APA Citation: Ralston, Devon Fitzgerald. (2012). Where ya at? Composing identity through hyperlocal narratives. In Debra Journet, Cheryl E. Ball, & Ryan Trauman (Eds.), The new work of composing. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. http://ccdigitalpress.org/nwc/chapters/ralston/
Ultimately, the hyperlocal approach isn’t just about people typing in their zip codes and receiving aggregated local content but rather contributing content in the form of stories, photos, videos, etc. Users want personalized content, but they also want control over their media, control over the way their stories, locations, and neighborhoods are represented. They want in on the action.
The connections users make with one another in social media are typically based on proximity, either social or physical because users are no longer residing in online spaces and then moving offline but rather moving between the two in a myriad of ways, most significantly creating web presences online for their geophysical location as a way to further construct and represent their collective identities.
Hyperlocal content does not necessarily mean focusing on smaller areas and excluding metropolitan areas like New York or Dallas. As a matter of fact, many sites I discuss throughout this webtext have the bulk of their content geared toward major cities rather than small towns. Recommendation site yelp asks users to share their local knowledge of businesses and organizations ranging from restaurants to churches.
When focusing on hyperlocal content, the relevance of the information becomes paramount in order to avoid what Steven Johnson (2007) called the “pothole paradox.” The idea is that the pothole in front of your home or apartment is a big deal to you, but your friends a few blocks over couldn’t care less.
According to co-creator Steven B. Johnson (2006), outside.in is “an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood” (n.p.). Johnson explained that the purpose of outside.in is to unite the various voices emerging from hyperlocal bloggers, review sites, city government sites, and traditional media while grounding the information geographically.
The digital neighborhood, in the case of place bloggers, begins within a literal neighborhood and moves outward. And like many digital neighborhoods, place bloggers often focus on what journalists call hyperlocal content.
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