[ecrea] call for abstracts - Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience Participation (ecrea panel proposal)

COST IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience 
Participation

As part of activities of the COST Action IS0906: Transforming Audiences, 
Transforming Societies this call kindly invites to submit abstracts to 
be included in the panel proposal Participatory Journalism: 
Possibilities and Constraints for Audience Participation for the 4th 
European Communication Conference – Social Media, Global Vocies. 
Especially Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are invited to respond to this 
invitation, but all paper proposals will be considered for inclusion.

This call for abstracts is a response to the call for panel proposals 
released by The European Communication Research and Education 
Association (ECREA) and the Turkish Communication Research Association 
(ILAD), together with Istanbul Bilgi University. For more information on 
the call for proposals check: 
http://www.ecrea2012istanbul.eu/call-for-proposals.html

The final panel proposal will consist of five selected individual 
abstracts (400–500 words) sent till 14 February 2012 to Igor Vobic(, 
Liaison Officer for ESRs within Working Group 2 – Audience Interactivity 
and Participation ((igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si)).



*** CALL FOR ABSTRACTS ***

In late modern societies communication 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 
also facilitated the ideas of collaborative and collective in 
contemporary journalism of traditional media organizations. “People 
formerly known as the audience” (Jay Rosen) have actively started to 
contribute to the ongoing processes of creating news websites of 
mainstream media and got variously engaged in participatory journalism, 
which is also known as “user-generated content”, “pro-am journalism”, 
and “citizen-engaged press” among other phrases. 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 collective and collaborative 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 have these dynamics reshaped the prevailing societal 
roles of journalists and the established social meanings of news? 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?

Authors included in the panel proposal for the conference Social Media, 
Global Voices, should consider these questions as the basis of their 
papers. 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.

Abstracts should be written in English and contain a clear outline of 
the argument, the theoretical framework, and, where applicable, 
methodology and results. The preferred length of the individual 
abstracts should be of a maximum of 500 words.



TIMELINE

Abstract submission deadline (400–500 words): 14 February 2012

Send abstracts to: Igor Vobic(, Faculty of Social Sciences, University 
of Ljubljana, Slovenia ((igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si))

Notification of Acceptance for the Panel Proposal: 28 February 2012

Notification of Acceptance of the Panel Proposal: 1 May 2012

Conference: 24–27 October 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey

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