“Doing Community”: Digital Hyperlocal Media as Care

Abstract

The popularisation of digital media technologies, from the Internet to diverse social media networks, has enabled ordinary citizens to become digital hyperlocal media participants in various localities. The current study examines digital hyperlocal media practices in Seoul from an ontological, ethical and political perspective of care. There is convergence in how digital hyperlocal media constitute a singular form of caring-with, particularly by practicing truth by, for, and of themselves in a locality. In our analysis, care-of-us ethics featured in digital hyperlocal media are actualised in five interrelated elements of ‘space, collectivity, communication, work, and product’—that is, (1) creating and dwelling (space), (2) hosting and joining (collectivity), (3) listening and speaking (communication), (4) shifting and overlapping (work), and (5) versatility and vernacularity (product). Digital hyperlocal media is an incubation (not perfection) of the local public sphere, in which participants, both producers and audiences, are connected as immanent (not established) members of the public, and create threads of potential (not completed) public opinions.