[Commlist] Journalism CFP: Data journalism and audience engagement

/*Journalism*/ CFP
*Data Journalism and Audience Engagement*
Guest Editor: Jingrong Tong - University of Sheffield, UK

Data journalism came to prominence in 2008 and since then has been 
significantly incorporated into daily reporting, especially during the 
COVID-19 pandemic. Scholars and practitioners often celebrate data 
journalism’s potential to improve audience engagement (see Ilagan & 
Soriano, 2019; de-Lima-Santos & Mesquita, 2021; Borges-Rey, 2020; Felle, 
2016). The heavy use of interactive data stories presumably brings fun 
and innovative ways of engaging audiences. Creative crowd-sourcing 
methods, exemplified by the UK MPs Expenses Scandal (2009) and The 
Counted (2015/2016), are believed to enhance public participation in 
social and political issues. Data journalists also expect the 
publication of datasets to increase trust in their work and encourage 
audiences to explore the data and draw conclusions through their own 
analysis. Despite these positive beliefs, it is uncertain if audiences 
engage well with data journalism for two reasons. First, today’s 
audiences are active, elusive, and fragmented, which makes engagement 
particularly challenging. Second, understanding data stories may require 
levels of data literacy that audiences may not possess.

Most of the existing studies focus on the practices and epistemology of 
data journalists, the development of data journalism and its integration 
into newsrooms in different countries (see Appelgren & Nygren, 2014; 
Fink & Anderson, 2015; Knight, 2015; Maeyer, Libert, Domingo, 
Heinderyckx, & Cam, 2015; Tabary, Provost, & Trottier, 2016; Cushion, 
Lewis, & Callaghan, 2017; Tong, 2022). While these studies contribute to 
our understanding of data journalism in particular and journalism in 
general in the digital era, they pay more attention to news production 
than to news audiences. What we know about data journalism and audience 
engagement is very limited due to the dearth of relevant literature. 
However, knowledge of data journalism’s audience engagement is crucial, 
as it offers a new angle of examining data journalism, facilitates the 
improvement of data reporting and also provides new insights into the 
role of data journalism in society.

This theoretical and empirical void results in a series of questions. 
Can data journalism truly boost audience engagement? Can data reporting 
encourage public participation and news consumption? If so, how and to 
what extent? Who are data journalism’s audiences? How do audiences 
perceive data journalists’ practices and data stories? What factors 
might influence their consumption and perception? How do audiences’ 
consumption and reception of data stories impact their understanding of 
reality? How do we measure audience engagement with data journalism? And 
what implications are there for data journalism’s impact and role in 
society?

This special Issue of /Journalism: Theory, Practice, & Criticism/ 
invites the submission of papers. Areas of interest include, but are not 
limited to:

·Mapping data journalism’s audiences

·Crowd-funding and/or public participation in data journalism projects

·Data journalism and news consumption in context

·Audience perceptions of data journalism and data stories

·Data journalism and audiences’ perceptions of data stories

·Data journalism and the identity and everyday life of audiences

·Digital and social inequalities in audience engagement with data journalism

·Measuring audience engagement and data journalism’s impact with metrics 
and beyond

·Data journalists’ audience engagement strategies

·Theoretical and methodological approaches to studying data journalism 
and audience engagement

·Comparative studies on data journalism and audience engagement

·Comparisons between different forms of data journalism and their 
audience engagement

·Other topics that can contribute to understanding data journalism and 
audience engagement

Please see the key dates below. If you are interested, please submit an 
extended abstract of 500 words (in English), along with an 
up-to-150-word bio, introducing your relevant expertise. Abstracts 
should be sent to (j.tong /at/ sheffield.ac.uk) <mailto:(j.tong /at/ sheffield.ac.uk)> 
by *October 7, 2022*. Upon selection, scholars will be invited to submit 
full papers of no more than 8000 words in length to the journal by 
*March 31, 2023*. All submitted manuscripts are subject to a rigorous, 
blind peer-review process. Papers must not have been previously 
published and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

*Key dates*

October 7, 2022 - Deadline for abstract submission

October 24, 2022 - Notification to authors

March 31, 2023 - Deadline for submission of full papers

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