[ecrea] CfP - Special Issue on the Changing Business of Journalism

International Journal of Press/Politics

SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS: Comparative Perspectives on the Changing 
Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy

The last decade has seen tremendous change in the commercial news media 
that play a central role in political processes in democracies around 
the world. Dramatic social changes, economic fluctuations, and new 
technologies have all combined to transform at least in part the media 
systems inherited from the 20th century. But our understanding of the 
direction, drivers, and implications of these changes remains incomplete 
and provisional, partially because there has been a tendency to try to 
understand the transition in purely national terms without rigorous 
comparison to how things have unfolded elsewhere.

This special issue of the International Journal of Press/Politics is 
dedicated to international comparative research on the changing 
character of commercial news media in democracies around the world at 
the beginning of the 21st century, and what these changes in turn mean 
for democratic politics. The motivation is our view that cross‐country 
analysis is necessary to understand both the causes and consequences of 
current changes, and that mass media and mass politics remain so tightly 
intertwined that changes in one will have consequences for the other. We 
therefore invite contributors to focus, on the basis of empirical work 
in two or more democracies, on both substantive and more theoretical 
issues including:

• Developments in news media industries including newspapers, 
free‐to‐air broadcasting, cable television, and pure player news 
provision with an emphasis on what these developments mean for their 
role in democracies

• Similarities and dissimilarities between trends in the functioning of 
news media in different democracies, in established versus new 
democracies, and in mature markets versus emerging markets with 
attention to their political consequences

• The role of public policy in responding to recent changes in the media 
industries across different democracies, and the wider democratic 
implications

• The changing definition and role of “journalism” and the potential 
rise of new kinds of journalism (partisan media, private high‐price 
subscription‐only news services, etc) in different countries and what it 
means for democracy

• The development of new information and communication technologies as 
used for news production, dissemination, and engagement across different 
democracies, and what this means for the relations between media and 
politics

• The utility of inherited conceptual vocabularies based on individual 
media platforms (print, broadcasting, etc) and often assuming the 
nation‐state as a unit of analysis (media systems, etc) in understanding 
present changes in times some see as defined by internationalization and 
convergence In each case we seek contributions that use a comparative 
approach to get a firmer empirical and conceptual understanding of 
current transformations in the media sector in democratic societies, and 
directly address the question of what this means for politics.

The issue will be edited by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (University of Oxford 
and Roskilde University), Frank Esser (University of Zurich), and David 
Levy (University of Oxford).

Authors should submit papers using the online system 
(http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijpp). The deadlyne for submission is 
October 1st 2012. Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words including 
tables and bibliography. All submissions will be peer reviewed, and the 
editors will select 5 or 6 articles for publication. The issue is 
tentatively scheduled for publication in July 2013.

Questions should be directed to Dr Nielsen 
((rasmus.nielsen /at/ politics.ox.ac.uk)) or Professor Esser 
((f.esser /at/ ipmz.uzh.ch)). More information is found here: 
http://hij.sagepub.com/


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