[Commlist] CfP Special Issue of Digital Journalism - Adaptation in Digital Journalism

CFP
Adaptation in Digital Journalism

In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital journalism, adaptation has 
become a crucial strategy for survival and growth. This special issue of 
Digital Journalism seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of 
adaptation within the field, examining how the relevant actors and 
institutions of digital journalism proactively and reactively adapt to 
technological advancements, shifting audience behaviors, and the 
changing socio-political environment.

As a construct that has emerged out of biology, anthropology, and health 
sciences, we know that adaptation is crucial human skill. Yet as Sarta 
et al. (2021) argue, “scholars have used the concept of adaptation 
inconsistently across research traditions without always being able to 
push the research agenda beyond analogical reasoning” (p. 44). While 
there might be a notion that adaptation is a passive process, one that 
happens to, for example, journalists or journalism organizations, this 
is only one portion of the concept. Research primarily defines 
adaptation as a response or reaction to a force in that an “instance of 
adaptation is viewed as a modification” that occurs “in reaction (or 
response, for that matter) to an external or environmental 
contravention” (Sachs & Meditz, 1979, p. 1084; Giddens, 1999). In this 
way, adaptation is opportunistic and describes how an individual or 
organization or institution can choose change and but still engage in a 
range of different forms of adaptation (Sachs & Meditz, 1979). 
Adaptation in digital journalism can take many forms, from the 
integration of emerging technologies and platforms to the reimagining of 
practices and ethics. And there are a range of actors engaged in the 
adaptation in digital journalism, who may not be formally affiliate with 
journalism, and who conduct work relevant to the overall adaptation of 
the field (as with technologists, peripheral actors).

In our field, adaptation has been primarily considered through the lens 
of technology, yet the actors of digital journalism actively adapt to a 
range of actions, actors and contexts: changes in the audience (e.g. 
rising audience hostility), physical environment (e.g. COVID protocols, 
violence), personal circumstances (e.g. precarity, life changes, 
employment disillusionment), political environment (e.g. democratic 
backsliding), market changes, and others. Adaptation means actors at 
times engage in “adoption” of new processes, seeking to normalize them 
as a part of working routines (Perreault & Ferrucci, 2020). As actors 
have engaged in platformization, this means at times that they have 
adapted through the stacking of platform-specific skills, using the 
skills gained in adapting to one platform to jumpstart their adaptation 
to others. But at times actors also engage in “selection” of other 
processes to denormalise when they no longer serve (e.g. many 
journalists are stepping away from social media; Bossio et al., 2024). 
Research produced within the “emotional turn” (e.g. Wahl-Jorgensen, 
2020) and “audience turn” (e.g. Costera Meijer, 2020) shows that, to 
stay relevant to changing audiences and new political and cultural 
contexts, actors reconsider/select old and actively adopt new processes 
and skills. For example, journalists have engaged in adaptation through 
personalizing their reporting, using authenticity, empathy, and passion 
as strategic skills, building emotional and trauma literacy, and 
redefining long-dominating cornerstones of journalistic professionalism, 
such as objectivity and impartiality.

Digital journalism bears meaningful similarities in this regard to other 
fields: journalists can anticipate change even if they don’t know what 
that change will entail. But conversely, and unlike other fields, 
journalists are often not provided the resources to ease adaptation. For 
this reason, this special issue seeks to center adaptability as a 
crucial journalistic professional skill; it is perhaps more crucial in 
journalism than other fields given that journalists consistently find 
themselves negotiating new circumstances and environments as a native 
part of their work.

This special issue invites contributions that investigate these adaptive 
processes, particularly those that challenge traditional norms and 
propose innovative approaches to journalism in the digital age.

We are interested in a wide and overlapping range of digital journalism 
actors–journalists, technologists, businesspeople, fact checkers, 
fixers, peripheral actors, news organizations, platforms, policymakers, 
regulatory bodies–and topics, including but not limited to:

Technological Adaptation: How are relevant actors and organizations 
incorporating emerging technologies such as AI, VR, and blockchain into 
their workflows? What are the implications of these technologies for 
media integrity and audience trust? How have actors adapted through 
platformization and datafication?

Emotional Adaptation: How are the actors of digital journalism adapting 
emotionally to changes within the media ecosystem to which they can have 
little effect? What are the means by which actors engage in selection in 
order to engage in emotional management? How can actors cultivate and 
actively employ emotional literacy to adapt to changing media landscapes 
and audience behavior, increase their relevance for broader audiences, 
and secure their unique role and place within the attention economy?

Adaptation to Audiences: How are the actors of digital journalism 
adapting to changes in audience behavior and preferences? What 
strategies are being employed to engage diverse and fragmented 
audiences? How can actors actively go to meet their audiences, including 
young audiences, where they are?

Normative Adaptation: How are ethical standards in media being redefined 
in the digital era? What new ethical dilemmas are emerging, and how are 
the actors of digital journalism addressing them? How have norms adapted 
to digitization?

Economic Adaptation: How are news and tech organizations adapting their 
business models to ensure sustainability in a digital-first world? What 
innovative revenue streams are being explored?

Cultural and Political Adaptation: How are the actors of digital 
journalism navigating the complex cultural and political landscapes of 
the 21st century? How are they addressing issues of misinformation, 
polarization, and censorship?

Submission Instructions

Extended abstracts should include an abstract of 500 words (not 
including references) as well as a full list of author(s) with 
affiliation(s) and abbreviated bio(s). Please submit your proposal to 
Dr. Gregory Perreault ((gperreault /at/ usf.edu)) as one file (PDF) with your 
names clearly stated on the first page.

Full manuscripts should target a length of 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

Extended abstract submission deadline: July 1, 2025
Notification on acceptance of abstract: August 1, 2025
Deadline for full manuscripts: October 31, 2025

No payment from the authors will be required.

For questions, please contact one of the Special Issue Editors:

Gregory Perreault, University of South Florida
(gperreault /at/ usf.edu)

Patrick Ferrucci, University of Colorado-Boulder
(Patrick.Ferrucci /at/ Colorado.EDU)

Johana Kotišová, University of Amsterdam
(j.kotisova /at/ uva.nl)

Dariya Orlova, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla
(orlova /at/ ukma.edu.ua)


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