[Commlist] Call for Papers: Dissolving Boundaries of Hybrid Journalism

Call for Papers for the Thematic Section 1/2020 of Studies in 
Communication Sciences (SComS)

**"The Dissolving Boundaries of Hybrid Journalism: Rethinking News Work 
Between Datafication, Hacking and Activism"**

*Guest editors*
Dr. Colin Porlezza (City, University of London) & Dr. Philip Di Salvo 
(Università della Svizzera italiana)

As journalism becomes increasingly networked and datafied – produced by 
different actors with different backgrounds, intentions and norms – new 
types of hybrid journalism arise. These hybrid forms of journalism often 
transcend traditional conceptions as journalists increasingly engage in 
activism or in collaborations with whistleblowers, hackers algorithms 
and artificial intelligence or machine learning. While this trend 
challenges the binary thinking of what journalism is and what it is not, 
it also enables new forms of journalistic truth-telling (Baym, 2017). 
This call wants to explore, discuss and shed light on the different 
types and forms of hybrid journalism, what hybridity actually means and 
what consequences it entails for news work.

Scholars like Carlson (2015, 2016), Lewis (2012, see also Carlson & 
Lewis, 2015) have shown that the boundaries of journalism are more and 
more contested as journalists are forced to renegotiate the space 
between producers and users in a digital environment characterized by 
high choice (Van Aelst et al., 2017) and a participatory culture 
(Jenkins, 2013). The established news production with its specific set 
of epistemological beliefs is thus confronted with new actors and 
professional roles such as data journalists, hackers, cybersecurity 
experts, activists or whistleblowing platforms that turn journalism into 
a blurred term difficult to pin down. These circumstances entail 
tensions over definitions of journalism as cultures, role conceptions, 
epistemologies, norms and educational paths become increasingly 
heterogeneous.

At the same time, however, the concept of hybridity is not immune to 
criticisms: Witschge et al. (2018) rightly pointed out that not every 
complex phenomenon that defies any immediate explanation is 
automatically an emergence of hybridity. We should therefore better 
understand what hybridity means in the first place, how its explanatory 
power can be fruitfully connected to other existing theoretical 
frameworks in journalism, and what developments are “truly” hybrid.

Hybrid journalism requires us to rethink the “limited binary dualities 
that have long governed our theoretical and empirical work in the field” 
(Witschge et al. 2018) and some of its most central notions such as 
autonomy, collaboration, objectivity, the separation of news and 
entertainment or fact and fiction. Therefore, this thematic section aims 
at gathering cutting-edge research on journalism and hybridity, with a 
specific emphasis on the role of data-driven journalism, cybersecurity, 
hacking and activism. In addition we would like to explore collaborative 
news production between journalists and actors outside the established 
journalistic field, and how they shape the culture(s) of journalism. We 
also encourage scholars to submit papers that cover non-Western 
countries. We invite contributions not only from journalism studies, but 
from all fields across media studies and communication sciences. 
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- How datafication is shaping journalistic epistemologies

- The borderline between activism and journalism

- Journalists as hackers or the perils of collaborations with hackers

- The importance of cybersecurity for and its impact on journalism

- Hybridity in human-AI collaborations in newsmaking

- The consequences of dissolving boundaries and shifting norms for 
journalistic authority

- Ethical challenges of hybrid journalism

- The amalgamation of pop culture and news reporting

- The consequences for newsmaking of different role conceptions of 
actors participating in the networked news production

*Article format*
The length of the articles in the thematic section should be between 
6,000 and 8,000 words (including abstract and references). All submitted 
papers must adhere to APA6 style (www.apastyle.org 
<http://www.apastyle.org>).

*Submission guidelines*
Abstracts of 500 words should be sent to (hybridjournalism2018 /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(hybridjournalism2018 /at/ gmail.com)> by *15^th March, 2019*. The 
abstracts should include the main idea/argument, research questions, a 
short literature review and/or theoretical perspectives, information on 
methodology and empirical findings (if relevant). The journal welcomes 
submissions in English, German, French, or Italian, but the abstract has 
to be written in English. Please include also your names, affiliations 
and contact details. Decision of acceptance will be given by 15th April, 
2019. Invited full paper will be due on 31st July, 2019. The invitation 
to submit a full paper does not guarantee acceptance into the special 
issue. Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. 
The expected publication date of the thematic section is April 2020. The 
thematic section is expected to contain between 5 and 6 articles.

*About SComS*
SComS is an international open access journal of communication research 
that is jointly edited by the Swiss Association of Communication and 
Media Studies (SACMR) and the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the 
Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano). The journal is fully 
open access to both the authors and readers. The publishing home is 
HOPE, which stands for Hauptbibliothek Open Publishing Environment, 
which is offered by the Main Library of the University of Zurich based 
on the infrastructure of the Zentrale Informatik.




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