Volunteer Moderation as Situated Civic Labor in Local Information Infrastructures

Local information is essential for civic engagement, community belonging and well-being, and collective action. As more U.S. communities become "news deserts" without local newspapers or broadcast media, neighborhood- and municipality-level groups on platforms like Facebook, Nextdoor, and Reddit have become key nodes in local information infrastructure. This paper examines how volunteer moderators of these local online groups contribute to sustaining local information infrastructure, focusing on how they understand their groups’ informational function, the roles they assume to realize this function, and the skills they mobilize to fulfill perceived roles. Drawing on an Asynchronous Remote Community study and in-depth interviews with U.S.-based moderators, we conceptualize local volunteer moderation as situated civic labor, emphasizing the interpretive, relational, and context-contingent nature of their work. We offer design implications for platforms to support local knowledge and discretion and sustain democratic practices to strengthen the civic potential of online spaces to serve their local communities.