[Commlist] CFP: Journalism Studies Special Issue on ‘Bodies in Journalism'

We’ve extended the deadline for papers submitted to our Bodies in 
Journalism special issue for the journal Journalism Studies.

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CFP: Journalism Studies Special Issue on ‘Bodies in Journalism' *

*Manuscript deadline extended: 2 September 2024*

The body has been a focal point of cultural critique in humanities and 
social sciences research since the corporeal or bodily turn of the 1980s 
and 1990s, when it began to be perceived as discursively shaped by 
language, culture, and ideology, rather than a fixed biological entity 
(Clever and Ruberg, 2014). In journalism, bodies play a crucial role in 
the day-to-day performance of news work: interacting with sources, 
collecting sensitive information, and negotiating access are integral 
aspects of the emotional labour of the profession (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020; 
Wahl-Jorgensen and Pantti, 2021). Despite its essential role in 
journalism, the body – encompassing its senses, emotions, moods, and 
impulses – has been relatively overlooked as an object of research 
(Francoeur, 2021). When the body does receive attention, it is often 
portrayed as an obstacle that hinders ‘good journalism’, particularly in 
discourses concerning professional objectivity (Francoeur, 2021, 203). 
The need to move beyond the mind/body dualism that has structured 
western thought with its negative valuation of the body (though a 
necessary precondition for the mind) is widely acknowledged, along with 
the need to understand its material and discursive positionings.

This special issue is particularly interested in the different meanings, 
practices, identities, and dimensions of bodies in journalism. It aims 
to foster new perspectives on the ways in which practitioners 
experience, deploy and utilise this corporeal mode of communication 
(Francoeur 2021; see also Postema 2024, Sánchez Laws 2020). In turn, 
contributions will consider how such insights shape the profession’s 
conception, practices and values. An intervention of this kind is all 
the more urgent given the technological, institutional and cultural 
factors shaping bodies in journalism.

In the context of the technological, AI, algorithms and automation are 
increasingly being integrated into newsrooms. Alongside contemporary 
analyses of the innovative and disruptive potential of these 
technologies (Lewis and Westlund 2015), are studies of the consequences 
of human-machine interactions in news production contexts and the 
capacity of technological actors to function not merely as mediators of 
knowledge but as active communicators (Lewis et al., 2019). 
Understanding how these new (mostly disembodied) actors reconfigure 
professional roles and routines, extend the human body with its sensory 
capacities, and the consequences for our understanding of who is a 
journalist and what constitutes journalism are pressing areas for research.

With regard to the institutional, the development of sensory, artistic, 
and affective forms of journalism point to ways in which the body can be 
positioned as the medium of storytelling and/or deployed to (re)create 
the richness and complexity of journalistic practices. Recent work on 
‘journalistic theatre’ (Postema 2024) and embodied storytelling through 
narrative, dance, and movement, has been shown to increase audience 
engagement (Adams and Cooper 2022), and challenge press censorship 
(Nenjerama and Sibanda 2019), while the use of social media as a form of 
‘flesh witnessing’ to record the lives of people caught in the 
crosshairs of conflict, opens up to reporters embodied experiences that 
would be otherwise inaccessible (Chouliaraki and Al-Ghazzi 2022). Others 
have explored journalism as artistic practice that involves aesthetic, 
sensory, affective, and experiential elements (Postema and Deuze 2020) 
as well as arts-based methods for researching journalism that include 
sketching, painting, visualising, and handwriting letters (Hölsgens, de 
Wildt and Witschge 2020). Understanding storytelling approaches that 
privilege the body as well as embodied approaches to journalism research 
is crucial given the recognised need for truth-telling that is 
authentic, credible and captures a community’s lived experience.

Finally, scholars of corporeal feminism argue that bodies are 
discursively constructed and culturally determined: they function as 
both material objects and cultural signs that are mutually constitutive 
(Balsamo 1995). Where it concerns practices of production and reception 
in contemporary journalism, this argument raises a number of questions: 
how do the embodied markers of cultural identity inform and shape 
networked, digital journalism practice? How are gendered, raced, 
classed, sexualised, and differently abled bodies perceived and 
represented in journalistic content and what are the economy of meanings 
ascribed to them? These questions suggest the need to understand the 
role of culturally produced bodies in evolving journalistic contexts 
brought about by the digital era.

We welcome submissions encompassing both conceptual and empirical 
approaches, spanning quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods 
research. We encourage contributions ranging from single-country studies 
to cross-national comparisons that contribute to advancing our 
understanding of the relationship between bodies and journalism amid 
technological, institutional, and cultural transformations.

We encourage submissions including, but not limited to, the following areas:

Spaces, genres, and forms of embodied storytelling

Embodied practices of journalists and affective knowledge

New bodily configurations in human-machine news contexts

New journalistic methodologies involving the body

Innovative approaches to the body as a medium of news storytelling

Audience’s embodied responses to journalistic texts

Critiques of the representation of bodies in and by news media

*Instructions for contributors and timeline*

We invite interested contributors to submit a full draft manuscript of 
8,000 words (including all text, notes, references, tables, charts, 
etc.) with author name(s), institutional affiliation, and contact 
details to the Journalism Studies journal by 2 September 2024. Please 
select 'special issue title' when submitting your paper to ScholarOne. 
The submission should clearly address the relevance of the proposed 
article to the theme of the special issue. Please follow the 
instructions on the journal homepage for formatting your paper. The 
guest editors will conduct a desk review of submissions and those 
accepted will proceed to anonymous peer review. Note that acceptance of 
the paper for anonymous peer review is not a guarantee of final 
publication in the themed issue. The special issue is expected to be 
published in 2025.No payment from the authors will be required.

*Guest editors*

Belinda Middleweek, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

E. (Belinda.Middleweek /at/ uts.edu.au) <mailto:(Belinda.Middleweek /at/ uts.edu.au)>

Saba Bebawi, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

E. (Saba.Bebawi /at/ uts.edu.au) <mailto:(Saba.Bebawi /at/ uts.edu.au)>

*References*

Adams, C., & Cooper, G. (2022). “I felt I got to know everyone”: How 
news on stage combines theatre and journalism for a live audience. 
/Journalism Practice/. doi:10.1080/17512786.2022.2052345

Balsamo, A. (1995).Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body 
in Contemporary Culture. /Body & Society/, 1(3-4), 215-237.

Chouliaraki, L., & Al-Ghazzi, O. (2022). Beyond verification: Flesh 
witnessing and the significance of embodiment in conflict 
news./ Journalism/, 23(3), 649-667. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211060628 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211060628>

Clever, I. and Ruberg, W. (2014) Beyond Cultural History? The Material 
Turn, Praxiography, and Body History. /Humanities./ 3(4):546-566. 
https://doi.org/10.3390/h3040546 <https://doi.org/10.3390/h3040546>

Francoeur, C. (2021). (Reprint) – Bodying the Journalist. /Brazilian 
Journalism Research/, 17(1), 202–227. 
https://doi.org/10.25200/BJR.v17n1.2021.1354 
<https://doi.org/10.25200/BJR.v17n1.2021.1354>.

Hölsgens, S., de Wildt, S., & Witschge, T. (2020). Towards an 
Experientialist Understanding of Journalism: Exploring Arts-based 
Research for Journalism Studies. /Journalism Studies/, 21(7), 928-946. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1703121 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1703121>

Lewis, S. C., Guzman, A. L., & Schmidt, T. R. (2019). Automation, 
Journalism, and Human–Machine Communication: Rethinking Roles and 
Relationships of Humans and Machines in News. /Digital Journalism/, 
7(4), 409-427. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1577147 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1577147>

Lewis, S.C. & Westlund, O. (2015) Actors, Actants, Audiences, and 
Activities in Cross-Media News Work, /Digital 
Journalism/, 3:1, 19-37, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.927986 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.927986>

Nenjerama, T., & Sibanda, N. (2019). Navigating between protest theatre 
and journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. /Communicatio/, 45(2), 18–33. 
doi:10.1080/02500167.2019.1626457

Postema, S. (2024). Journalistic Theater: A Case Study of Reporting on 
People’s Emotional Response to Current Affairs with the Body as Medium. 
/International Journal of Communication/, 18, 363–383. 
https://doi.org/1932–8036/20240005 
<https://doi.org/1932%E2%80%938036/20240005>

Postema, S., &  Deuze, M. (2020) Artistic Journalism: Confluence in 
Forms, Values and Practices, /Journalism Studies/, 21:10, 1305-1322,  
DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2020.1745666 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1745666>

Sánchez Laws, A. L. (2020). Can immersive journalism enhance empathy? 
/Digital Journalism/, 8(2), 213–228. doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1389286

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2020). An emotional turn in journalism studies? 
/Digital Journalism/ 8 (2), 175- 194. 10.1080/21670811.2019.1697626

Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Pantti, M. (2021). Introduction: The emotional 
turn in journalism. /Journalism/, 22(5), 1147–1154. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920985704 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920985704>


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