The community's role in newspapers' technology use

For my final paper, I have one big, huge, overarching question and a whole bunch of different ways to tackle it. Here's a very short version of what I'm looking at -- I'd love to hear your feedback.

My overarching question: “What leads newspapers in different geographical and social settings to use technologies in different ways?” The key area of newspapers I'm interested in are community newspapers, but this question would allow me to compare those newspapers to other types as well.

For me, that means the dependent variable would be use of interactive technology -- which could be measured through a content analysis of newspapers' websites, mobile apps, and social media presences.

Where things get sticky is with the independent variable. There are a number of different ways I could go with this:

Attributes of the newspapers' geographic community. Possible research questions here:

What is the relationship between a community’s technological access and the use of technology by its newspapers? Could be measured through public FCC broadband access data.

What is the relationship between a community’s structural pluralism and the use of technology by its newspapers? Could be measured through Census data regarding race, education, poverty levels, and occupational classification.

What is the relationship between a community’s media use habits and the use of technology by its newspapers? Could be measured on a case study level, through a community survey.

The other area would be community journalists’ perceptions of their geographic community. Possible research questions:

What is the relationship between journalists’ perceptions of their community’s technology use and their own use of technology within community newspapers?

How do journalists’ perceptions of community technology use interact with other economic and professional factors in influencing their use of technology?

Both of these could be measured by surveying journalists about their perceptions of their community's technology use and their decision-making process regarding use of technology.

A lot of good (?) ideas, but not much direction. I could use some soon!