Migrant Voices, Local News: Insights on Bridging Community Needs with Media Content

arXiv cs.CL / 4/21/2026

📰 NewsIdeas & Deep AnalysisModels & Research

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Key Points

The study examines how French-speaking migrants in a mid-size European city consume local news and whether coverage reflects their community needs, addressing a lack of research on non-mainstream audiences.
Using focus-group insights from eight community members, the researchers applied NLP techniques—including topic modeling, information retrieval, sentiment analysis, and readability—to analyze more than 2,000 hyper-local news articles.
Findings suggest that although many articles cover local events, there are still topic gaps in areas participants consider important.
Sentiment analysis indicates the news is generally framed in a positive tone, while readability results suggest an intermediate-to-advanced French level, raising concerns about accessibility for integration.
The research aims to help local news organizations align their storytelling coverage with diverse reader needs and potentially expand coverage to better engage migrant audiences.

Abstract

Research shows news consumption differs across demographics, yet little is known about non-mainstream audiences, especially in relation to local media. Our study addresses this gap by examining how French-speaking migrants in a mid-size European city engage with local news, and whether their needs are reflected in coverage. Eight community members participated in focus groups, whose insights guided the selection of natural language processing methods (topic modeling, information retrieval, sentiment analysis, and readability) applied to over 2000 hyper-local news articles. Results showed that while articles frequently covered local events, gaps remained in topics important to participants. Sentiment analysis revealed a generally positive tone, and readability measures indicated an intermediate-advanced French level, raising questions about accessibility for integration. Our work contributes to bridging the gap between local news platforms' content and diverse readers' needs, and could inform local media organizations about opportunities to expand their current news story coverage to appeal to more diverse audiences.