[ecrea] CFP: Online Journalism and its Publics

Online journalism and its publics


December 5-6, 2013, Brussels

Official languages of the conference: English, French, Spanish, and 
Portuguese

This international and interdisciplinary conference aims at fostering 
the debate on audience consumption, production and participation in the 
journalistic sphere. Discussion forums, comment spaces, fact checking, 
crowdsourcing, blogs and social networks have expanded the opportunities 
for the participation of Internet users in the news production process. 
The relationship between journalism and its publics has become more 
complex, with multiple levels of interaction that are not always easy to 
fit into professional practices.

In the last decade we have heard utopian discourses announcing a 
revolution in journalism and the end of one-way mass communication. But 
we have also lived through the normalisation of audience participation 
on online news media, with gatekeeping criteria and isolation from news 
production as key strategies. The moment calls for an in-depth analysis 
of the circumstances, motivations and habits of the production and 
consumption of news in a digital context. We know well the professional 
practices in the newsrooms, but we lack empirical evidence on their 
publics, how do they select the information they consume and why do they 
decide to contribute information through any of the available means.

The audience was until recently an imaginary figure in the minds of 
journalists, editors in chief, marketing or advertising managers, and 
consulting agencies. It has now materialised online under the shape of 
contributions, nicknames, arguments and conversations through the 
diverse socio-technical artefacts of online news media. While in the 
past the participation of the reader was circumscribed to the letters to 
the editor in the newspapers (later adopted through the audience 
ombudsperson in broadcasting media), citizen discourses are now 
legitimated by news producers. As the category of the “public-user” 
becomes more visible, we can formulate hypotheses about their 
consumption and production practices, their representations of 
journalism and its role in society. We can gather empirical evidence of 
the evolution of news flows and overcome the sterile cries about the end 
of journalism and resituate it within the context of the emerging 
practices in digital environments.

These changes in the journalistic landscape call for analyses from 
multiple backgrounds: sociology of journalism and news, reception 
studies, history of communication, discourse analysis, cultural studies, 
anthropology. Contributions to the conference can focus on the following 
issues:

The public as:

· An actor present in the newsroom: the public lives in the mental and 
discursive representations of the journalists, but also in a more 
concrete way in the contributions of the users and the data generated by 
the monitoring of audience activity on news websites. It also involves 
the creation of new professional practices (such as the role of the 
community manager to deal with active audience participation). How do 
media companies adapt to this configuration (automated treatment of 
comments, new moderation tasks, outsourcing of moderation).

· An economic actor: news media try to monetise online audiences through 
support diversification of their products, recording increasingly 
complete consumer data, or developing production strategies that allow 
news consumption anywhere and anytime.

· An information producer, an expert: the public becomes an information 
source through comments in news and on the blogs embedded on the news 
websites. It is as well used by the media to legitimise some 
journalistic formats.

· A discourse producer: what are the features of the discourses of the 
publics? How do they engage in debates? What are their representations 
of the news products? To what extent do they challenge their reader's 
contract?

· A referee of social discourses: the new configuration enables the 
citizens to challenge the established distribution of knowledge in the 
public sphere and allows them to collectively monitor the journalistic 
discourse and propose rectifications.


Call for papers

Contributions to the conference can be sent in English, French, Spanish 
or Portuguese (max. of 500 words) to (publics2013 /at/ gmail.com) before May 5, 
2013.


Calendar:

Diffusion: February 5, 2013.

Deadline for abstracts: May 5, 2013.

Acceptance communication: June 1, 2013.

Deadline for full papers: October 5, 2013.


Organised by:

ReSIC: Centre de Recherche en Information et Communication (Université 
Libre de Bruxelles) & PReCoM : Pôle de Recherches sur la Communication 
et les Médias (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).


Presented in partnership with:

Action COST IS0906 Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies

DigiLab, Facultat de Comunicació Blanquerna (Universitat Ramon Lull, 
Barcelona)


Organising committee: Laura Calabrese (Université Libre de Bruxelles), 
Juliette De Maeyer (Université Libre de Bruxelles), David Domingo 
(Université Libre de Bruxelles), Marie-Soleil Frère (Université Libre de 
Bruxelles), Tomke Lask (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Florence Le Cam 
(Université Libre de Bruxelles), Geoffroy Patriarche (Université 
Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).


Scientific committee:

Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

Laura Calabrese (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

João Canavilhas (Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal)

David Domingo (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Marie-Soleil Frère (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

François Heinderyckx (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Alfred Hermida (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Ari Heinonen (University of Tampere, Finland)

María Elena Hernández (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico)

Josianne Jouët (Université Paris II, France)

Florence Le Cam (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Salvador de León (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Mexico)

Pere Masip (Universitat Ramon Lull, Catalonia)

Cécile Méadel (École des mines de Paris – ParisTech, France)

Geoffroy Patriarche (Université Saint-Louis, Belgium)

Steve Paulussen (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)

Fabio Henrique Pereira (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil)

Ike Pikone (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Cardiff University, UK)







----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------