In Madison, WI, two news groups – bloggers and local reporters – are squaring off, developing separate value systems and establishing protocols of intergroup activity. This study explored those framing values and documented individual role play within this Midwestern city’s information-producing community. An informal interpretive community of citizen journalists offers ways of knowing distinct from the way the press has traditionally practiced, negotiated and shared news stories. Interviews with citizens and professional journalists revealed convergences between these groups of news writers as well as dichotomies. This evidence showed that both the entrenched community of journalists and the emerging one of citizen news writers are framed by values of socially responsible missions, access to information, entitlement to knowledge and informal notions of professionalism. When ‘anyone can know’ – a quote from these interviews – the result is an adaptive organization of information producers that influence each other and redefine the aims, standards and ideology of journalism.

This paper examines youth digital cultures in rural/small town Gujarat, India and brings forth a perspective from the Global South in understanding the net generation. We examine how the location and dominant discourses intersect with digital technologies and re-configure aspects of daily lives, such as study, leisure, and friendship; how youth negotiate their interactions with digital media as one aspect of their larger lifeworlds; and how these negotiations influence cultural practices within structural environments. Youth in this study treat new media and technologies as one limited component of otherwise rich lives and social experiences. While new technologies promote individualistic mobility, Indian youth of small towns and rural places still live in collective social structures that shape their orientations. New media are at the periphery of their lives, as these youth have strong interpersonal connections that are rooted in geographic proximity and active school experiences.

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