Local Political Information on the Web: The Case of the 2007 Philadelphia Mayoral Campaign

Scholars and pundits have widely discussed the decline of print journalism, but there has been very little empirical research focussed on examining online alternatives. This article utilizes a unique sample of online local political content related to the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral campaign to address this void. A content analysis of this data set has three objectives: to depict the range of sources of online local political information (LPI) available to Philadelphians; to compare the LPI provided by these various sources; and to determine the amount and provenance of the original LPI that is available on the web. New media sources of LPI may be far from maturity, but this article finds that they do exist and are a viable resource for citizens.