[Commlist] CfP Pre-Conference: Reclaiming Digital Infrastructures for Journalism

Call for Papers

RECLAIMING DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES FOR JOURNALISM
Ownership, Dependency, and Public Interest Alternatives

Pre-conference to the ECREA Journalism Studies Section 2027
April 21, 2026 – University of National and World Economy


Conference Topic

This pre-conference asks how journalism can imagine, and more 
importantly, realize alternatives to the infrastructural dependencies 
that shape news in platform societies (van Dijck et al., 2018). Over the 
past 5+ years, research has made it very clear how news organizations 
increasingly depend on external digital platforms, cloud services, 
recommender systems, audience analytics, artificial intelligence tools, 
content moderation systems, and other infrastructures that condition how 
journalism is produced, distributed, measured, and governed (Dodds et 
al., 2023). As platform-based services acquire characteristics of 
infrastructure, these infrastructures enable and constrain 
communication, expression, and media freedom (Plantin et al., 2018). For 
journalism, therefore, the crises of trust, value, legitimacy, and 
authority are increasingly also a question of the technologies and 
infrastructures journalism uses.

There are many important reasons why journalism needs to make more 
conscious technology choices: platforms, chatbots, LLMs, and virtual 
assistants are more than simple channels through which journalism 
circulates. They reorganize information flows and distribution, and 
re-invent what news consumption could be tomorrow. Many of these 
technologies perform increasingly media-like functions but evade the 
regulatory and ethical frameworks historically developed for journalism 
and news institutions (Napoli, 2019). They come with their own values, 
which do not necessarily align with those of journalism.

Infrastructural questions are also questions of power, ownership, and 
data justice. From a decolonial and Global South perspective, data 
assemblages and extractive practices that power platforms and LLMs can 
amplify historical forms of colonization, and there is an urgent need to 
identify ways of resisting data and infrastructural colonization and to 
imagine alternative epistemologies respectful of the populations, 
cultural diversity, environments, and their rights and values (Ricaurte, 
2019). For journalism, reclaiming and repurposing infrastructures is 
inherently tangled with issues of data sovereignty, technological 
self-determination, unequal capacity, and the political economy of 
global platforms. These technological choices that media organizations 
make today, or will make tomorrow, affect the quality, fairness, and 
value of the public information ecosystem. They challenge news 
organizations to expand journalism’s ethical horizon to include the 
responsible selection of recommender systems, virtual agents, AI 
assistants, cloud services, social networks, and generative AI tools 
(Helberger, 2026). The problem and urgency are clear. Now we need to act!

Conference

The purpose of this pre-conference is to move from diagnosis to action. 
We invite scholars, practitioners, technologists, policy specialists, 
journalists, and civil society actors to examine how journalism can 
reclaim, repurpose, redesign, or build digital infrastructures in the 
public interest. What are digital infrastructures in the public 
interest, and when exactly are technological dependencies problematic? 
How can journalism reduce dependency on privately owned platforms? What 
would open-source, federated, cooperative, nonprofit, public, or 
commons-based infrastructures for journalism look like (Scholz, 2016)? 
How can regulation and policy support media freedom, editorial autonomy, 
and democratic accountability? What can public-interest technology labs, 
including initiatives such as the Public Tech Media Lab, 
newsroom-centered AI projects, and open-source investigative tools, 
contribute to this effort?

Because reclaiming digital infrastructures cannot be addressed by 
academic research alone, the pre-conference is conceived as a space of 
encounters across academia, policy, media, civil society, and activism. 
It fosters dialogue among scholars, practitioners, and those who build, 
govern, fund, or resist digital journalism infrastructures. In addition 
to practitioners, we especially encourage submissions from PhD students, 
early-career researchers, and members of the YECREA network.

Proposed Topics:

  *
    Mapping infrastructural dependency in journalism: How to make
    visible the way platforms, cloud services, APIs, recommender
    systems, generative AI tools, metrics, and content moderation
    systems shape news production, circulation, visibility, and governance.
  *
    The political economy of alternative journalistic infrastructures,
    including ownership, control, monetization, business cases, audience
    measurement, and the challenges of overcoming the concentration of
    infrastructural power in privately owned platforms.
  *
    (Alternative) Digital infrastructures as conditions of media
    freedom, editorial autonomy, accountability, and journalism’s
    capacity to serve the public interest.
  *
    Case studies of newsroom choices that adopt, reject, adapt, or
    repurpose alternative platforms and technologies.
  *
    What is the role of the audience in demanding, rejecting, switching
    to alternative platforms, and the role of technology in reclaiming
    the audience? What are new governance challenges of moving to
    alternatives? Which policies and regulatory frameworks help, and
    which maintain and legitimate the power of established players?
  *
    Different types of submissions are possible. You can submit a
    traditional research talk on one of the pre-conference topics, but
    you can also submit “work-in-progress” contributions, as well as a
    case study or applied research. For the latter, the conference
    provides an opportunity to discuss theoretical and methodological
    approaches, research designs, data collection, conceptual
    development, emerging findings, and other matters of interest.


Abstracts of no more than 500 words, references excluded, should be sent 
to (doddsrojas /at/ wisc.edu) by January 17, 23:59 Central European Time.

All submitted abstracts will be peer reviewed.

When submitting, please note:

  *
    Speakers are expected to be present. Virtual presentations are not
    possible.
  *
    Submissions must be in English and submitted as a .pdf file.
  *
    Please state whether your contribution is a research talk, applied
    research, or a work-in-progress talk.
  *
    Please indicate whether the first author is a student.
  *
    The abstracts should include the main idea/argument, research
    questions, theoretical perspectives, and/or information on
    methodology and empirical findings, if relevant.


The pre-conference will take place on April 21, 2027, at the University 
of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria.

There is no conference fee. Participants with special needs are kindly 
asked to contact the organizers.

Conference Organization

  *
    Tomás Dodds, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  *
    Natali Helberger, University of Amsterdam
  *
    Seth C. Lewis, University of Virginia
  *
    Elohim Monard, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  *
    Colin Porlezza, Università della Svizzera italiana
  *
    Valeria Resendez, University of Twente
  *
    Theresa Josephine Seipp, University of Amsterdam


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