[ecrea] Call for Articles: Participatory Journalism (Medijska istraživanja/Media Research)

Medijska istraživanja/Media Research

CALL FOR PAPERS



Special Issue (2013, Vol. 19, No. 2) on:

Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience 
Participation



Editor-in-Chief: Nada Zgrabljic' Rotar (University of Zadar, Croatia)

Guest Editor of the Special Issue: Igor Vobic( (University of Ljubljana, 
Slovenia)

COST Action IS0906: ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’: 
Working Group 2 ‘Audience Interactivity and Participation’.



Aim of the Special Issue:

In late modern societies journalism 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 
facilitated the ideas of collaborative and collective in contemporary 
journalism of traditional media organizations.

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 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 has audience 
conceiving among journalists shifted? How has conceiving of journalists 
among people changed? How have these dynamics reshaped the prevailing 
roles of journalists in society? 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? How has audience interactivity and 
participation re-shaped news discourse of traditional media 
institutions? How has news as a cultural product transformed in the 
accounts of participatory journalism?

Authors included in this special issue of Medijska istraživanja/Media 
Research should consider these questions as the basis of their 
theoretical and empirical examinations. 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.



Important Dates:
Abstracts of 400 words and author’s affiliation with contact details 
submission: 1 March 2013
Notification of abstract acceptance: 15 March 2013
Full manuscript of 7000 words submission: 15 June 2013
Results of double blind peer reviews: 1 September 2013
Revised papers submission: 15 September 2013
Notification of acceptance: 15 October 2013
Final papers submission: 1 November 2013
All Submissions should be sent electronically to Igor Vobic( 
((igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si))



About Medijska istraživanja/Media Research:

The journal Media Research is abstracted in Sociological Abstracts (SA), 
in Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) and in Social 
Planning/Policy & Development Abstracts (SOPODA), and indexed in Current 
Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). Additional information about the 
journal, including guidelines for authors, can be found at: 
http://hrcak.srce.hr/mediaresearch?lang=en

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