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[ecrea] call for abstracts - Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience Participation (ecrea panel proposal)

Wed Jan 18 09:19:36 GMT 2012


COST IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience Participation

As part of activities of the COST Action IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies this call kindly invites to submit abstracts to be included in the panel proposal Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience Participation for the 4th European Communication Conference – Social Media, Global Vocies. Especially Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are invited to respond to this invitation, but all paper proposals will be considered for inclusion.

This call for abstracts is a response to the call for panel proposals released by The European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the Turkish Communication Research Association (ILAD), together with Istanbul Bilgi University. For more information on the call for proposals check: http://www.ecrea2012istanbul.eu/call-for-proposals.html

The final panel proposal will consist of five selected individual abstracts (400–500 words) sent till 14 February 2012 to Igor Vobic(, Liaison Officer for ESRs within Working Group 2 – Audience Interactivity and Participation ((igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si)).



*** CALL FOR ABSTRACTS ***

In late modern societies communication is shaped by the concepts such as heterogeneity, fragmentation and individualization. Social networking sites, blogs, and micro-blogs have recently joined billions of websites enabling different individual and collective actors scattered across locales to participate in public communication in a variety of unprecedented ways. These online forms of communicative engagement have also facilitated the ideas of collaborative and collective in contemporary journalism of traditional media organizations. “People formerly known as the audience” (Jay Rosen) have actively started to contribute to the ongoing processes of creating news websites of mainstream media and got variously engaged in participatory journalism, which is also known as “user-generated content”, “pro-am journalism”, and “citizen-engaged press” among other phrases. Despite the fact that the idea of participatory journalism engages people inside and outside newsrooms to communicate not only to, but also with each other, there have been indications of inclusivist and also exclusivist principles and practices of collective and collaborative news making. On the one hand, different modes of audience participation in journalism have in some cases done away with some traditional ideals in journalism, such as truthiness, principle of objectivity, and disinterest in shaping of political life, and have replaced them with alternatives, such as deliberation, multiperspectivity, and participation in political life. In this sense, ordinary people have with professional-assistance captured and published in words, photos or videos stories of worldwide significance and shared personal perspectives or particular views from their small communities on issues of larger significance reshaping the dynamics between the global and the (micro-)local in public communication. On the other hand, traditional media organizations have developed models of audience engagement that do not involve non-professionals on equal footing as they enable professional journalists to retain control in news making. In what appears as struggle among professionals and non-professionals for legitimacy in public communication, a clear business motive is often at work – the pursuit for additional sources of income, the potential to sell targeted advertising across offline and online media, and getting back now fragmented mass audience. Considering the possibilities and constrains for audience participation, can we speak about the dominant models of participatory journalism or common modes of audience-engaged news making across locales? How has the relationship between journalists and the audience changed with the rise of participatory forms of public communication? How have these dynamics reshaped the prevailing societal roles of journalists and the established social meanings of news? How has the notion of the audience from the mass media world transformed? How has social-organization of traditional media organizations responded and newsroom cultures shifted in regards to ideas of collective and collaboration embedded in participatory journalism?

Authors included in the panel proposal for the conference Social Media, Global Voices, should consider these questions as the basis of their papers. It is recommended that the authors proceed from the particular participatory dynamics in audience-journalism relationship in their countries, do original theoretically-informed research study, and then elaborate it in a larger context of transformations in audience participation. Theoretical reflections about the issues above, comparative analyses and methodological reconsiderations are also very welcome.

Abstracts should be written in English and contain a clear outline of the argument, the theoretical framework, and, where applicable, methodology and results. The preferred length of the individual abstracts should be of a maximum of 500 words.



TIMELINE

Abstract submission deadline (400–500 words): 14 February 2012

Send abstracts to: Igor Vobic(, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia ((igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si))

Notification of Acceptance for the Panel Proposal: 28 February 2012

Notification of Acceptance of the Panel Proposal: 1 May 2012

Conference: 24–27 October 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey

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