[Commlist] CFP Problemi dell’informazione Special Issue: “Journalism beyond newsrooms. New forms, practices, and experiences of journalism beyond the institutional newsroom”

*Problemi dell'Informazione*

*Call for Papers _Special Issue - n. 1/2025*

*‘/ Journalism beyond newsrooms. New forms, practices, and experiences 
of journalism beyond the institutional newsroom/’.*

*Guest editors*: Sergio Splendore & Elena Valentini

*Description*


For a long time, studying journalism has meant studying its newsrooms. 
The paradigm of Newsroom Studies, sometimes also referred to as the 
sociology of news, precisely because it analyses how journalistically 
relevant information is produced and distributed, was capable of laying 
the foundations of journalism studies (Kunelius & Waisbord, 2023). What 
happens with the sociology of news is an accurate and meticulous 
sociological analysis of the work of journalism, where not only the 
mechanisms of social control attributable to editors or those in 
influential positions in the newsroom are taken into account but also 
the broader context of socialization to professionalism and the way it 
is exercised. With Newsroom Studies, the focus shifts from the 
individual choices of editors or journalists to the complex processes 
involved in the production of information and involving various actors. 
Newsroom Studies have also been able to identify the process of 
professionalization innovatively, considering the inclusion of 
objectivity and impartiality in practices and products of professional 
journalism a mean to make it more autonomous. On the contrary, it is 
argued here that those values could also be a way of strengthening 
dominant positions and cementing the status quo. Professionalization as 
a project was aimed not at increasing journalists’ independence but at 
co-opting them.

While Newsroom Studies has been regarded as a paradigm, the field’s 
contextual broadening and fragmentation make this approach less central. 
The contemporary media ecology has radically changed this context: 
recent work and analysis suggest that the supposed core of journalism 
and the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations 
are problematic starting points for journalism studies.

Among the many terms used to identify this change (hybrid journalism, 
convergent journalism, ambient journalism, collaborative journalism), 
Deuze and Witschge (2018) talk about beyond journalism. With this 
locution, they precisely indicate the context of profound 
transformations in the professional, business, technological, and social 
context of journalism, which is now pervaded by the rejection of 
professionalism, but at the same time, the need to affirm as reliable 
and true the production of information from actors outside the 
journalistic field, through alternative ways and different types of 
informational flows. For example, Peters and Allan (2022) study memes as 
new forms of digital communication to disrupt, undermine, attack, resist 
or reappropriate discursive positions pertaining to public affairs 
narratives in the news. Moreover, the recognition of a broader arena of 
news production and consumption implies the need to break established 
routines, the start-up culture, and a radical turn towards the audience 
(Swart et al. 2022), shifting the focus from what counts as news use to 
what is experienced as informative and positing many different audiences 
as active agents.

The role of the public at multiple levels is at the heart of new 
relational approaches in journalism studies. Recent works recognize 
relational work as part of journalistic professionalism in different 
forms: from engaged reporting to collaboration with the local community 
to organizing journalism festivals or social events such as opening the 
newsroom to the public (Koliska et al., 2023). These forms contribute to 
repositioning the role of journalists and journalism in society.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, scholars have investigated 
participatory practices in newsrooms. These practices have been at the 
centre of journalists’ meta-discourses, often considered an obligation 
to respond to and embrace or vital for the future of journalism (Vos & 
Ryan, 2023). At the same time, journalistic-centric visions of the 
audience prevailed (Carlson & Peters, 2023), also considering the 
contribution and the role of other actors from the point of view of 
journalists. Most recently, the discourse about participatory journalism 
has shifted to concerns and has declined (Vos & Ryan, 2023), opening new 
perspectives about audience engagement and the work beyond newsrooms.

Moreover, several scholars support an expansive view of journalism 
situated more broadly (Reese, 2021; Zelizer et al., 2022) and promote a 
decentralized vision of journalism based on experiences rather than 
norms, identifying the range of actors and institutions that provide 
people with knowledge and information about the world (Carlson & Peters, 
2023).

However, it is argued here that these new perspectives do not intend to 
question the centrality and importance of journalism in society but aim 
to reflect on the redefinition of the “places” and practices of 
information production and consumption. This call for papers, therefore, 
seeks to study and analyse the production and consumption of information 
that does not take place in traditional contexts, which goes beyond 
newsrooms.

The proposed empirical and theoretical analysis needs to stress the new 
perspectives necessary to grasp this change (or the old one still able 
to reach the scope) and propose the new meaning of professionalism that 
arises.


This group therefore includes, but is not limited to:

- Platformized news sources and products (forms of news initiatives 
embedded within social media);

- Journalism initiatives beyond newsrooms (journalists or media outlets 
themselves which meet audiences outside the newsrooms);

- Journalism Festivals;

- Media activism projects;

- Civic Journalism, Engaged reporting and other forms of community 
voices’ inclusion in news reports;

- New perspectives on participatory journalism;

- Debunking and fact-checking activities;

- Information production by nonjournalist actors;

- Audience consumption concerning what publics consider and consume as 
informative products beyond the traditional ones;

- New perspectives on the conception of what journalism is for and its 
role in society.



Key dates:

· Deadline for abstract submissions: May 30, 2024

· Decision by issue editors sent by: June 15, 2024

· Full paper submissions: September 30, 2024

· First round of reviews completed by: November 20, 2024

· Resubmissions of papers: December 20, 2024

· Second round of reviews completed by: January 15, 2025

· Submission of final manuscripts: February 15, 2025

Abstracts (300-500 words plus references) in English or Italian should 
be submitted at:

https://submission.rivisteweb.it/index.php/pdi 
<https://submission.rivisteweb.it/index.php/pdi>

Abstracts should be proposed for the section “Saggi”. Please indicate 
that the proposal is for the special issue edited by Splendore and 
Valentini in the box “Comments for the editor”.

For further information about the submission process, please contact: 
(elena.valentini /at/ uniroma1.it) <mailto:(elena.valentini /at/ uniroma1.it)>, 
(sergio.splendore /at/ unimi.it) <mailto:(sergio.splendore /at/ unimi.it)>


There are no APC (article processing charge) for authors.


*About the venue*

Established in 1976, Problemi dell’Informazione (PdI) has been the first 
Italian scientific journal focusing specifically on journalism and 
communication studies. Since then, PdI has represented a dedicated venue 
for the development of a vivid debate on these topics, fueled both by 
academic research and by contributions from professionals. More recently 
PdI has expanded its aims and scope by broadly considering all forms of 
communication, also to keep pace with the latest transformations in the 
field of journalism and of journalism studies. PdI publishes 
contributions in Italian and English after a rigorous double-blind peer 
review process.


*Principal Editor*: Carlo Sorrentino.

Here (https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/0390-5195 
<https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/0390-5195>

<https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/0390-5195 
<https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/0390-5195>>) its national and 
international board.

Problemi dell'Informazione is A-class rated journal by ANVUR (Italian 
National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research 
Systems) in Sociology of culture and communication



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