The Future of Journalism – final call for papers

We are delighted to announce the sixth biennial conference – The Future of Journalism – to be hosted by the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC) at Cardiff University, UK, and sponsored by Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

This call for papers invites contributions from those interested in the study, practice, regulation or reform of journalism.

Deadline for abstracts – January 31, 2017

Submissions on all aspects of journalism are welcomed. We particularly encourage contributions addressing the theme of “Journalism in a post-truth age?” This includes, but is not limited to, papers addressing issues such as:

• Challenges to the authority of legacy news institutions and the ideals of objectivity
• The increasing role of social media in shaping news consumption, and the associated emergence of “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers”
• The emergence of “fake news”
• The role of political satire as a form of news critique
• The increased automation of journalism through algorithms, bots and robots
• The changing patterns of sourcing and roles of expertise in journalism
• Watching the watchdog: Ensuring scrutiny, transparency and accountability of journalism in a “post-factual” era
• The implications for improving journalism education associated with these developments

A selection of the research-based papers presented at the conference will be published in special issues of the international peer-reviewed journals Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice and Journalism Studies.

Titles and abstracts for papers (250 words max) are invited by January 31st, 2017 and should be submitted online via the email address: FofJ2017@cardiff.ac.uk

Please submit no more than one abstract as first author, with no more than two abstracts in total (kindly include an email address for each co-author), please.

The conference fee will be £250, which includes tea and coffee breaks, lunch on both days, and the conference dinner on September 14th.

We are delighted to confirm our Keynote speakers: John Hartley (Curtin University, Australia), Silvio Waisbord (George Washington University, US) and Claire Wardle (First Draft).

Bios for three Keynote Speakers

John Hartley is John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University, Australia, and Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at Cardiff University. His books on journalism include Understanding News (1982), Popular Reality (1996) and The Indigenous Public Sphere (2000). He claims to have published the first account of “journalism in a post-truth society” (Popular Reality, 1992). Recent work focuses on creative industries and cultural citizenship, including The Creative Citizen Unbound (co-edited with Ian Hargreaves, 2016). Hartley is also working on evolutionary-complexity approaches to culture, e.g. Cultural Science (with Jason Potts, 2014) and Creative Economy and Culture (with Wen Wen and Henry Li, 2015). He is founding editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, now in its 20th year. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, International Communication Association, and Royal Society of Arts, and was awarded the Order of Australia in 2009.

Silvio Waisbord is Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication and former Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics. His recent books include News of Baltimore: Race, Rage and the City (edited with Linda Steiner, Routledge, 2017), Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights (edited with Howard Tumber, Routledge, 2017), and Media Movements: Civil Society and Media Policy Reform in Latin America (with Soledad Segura, Zed, 2016). He has lectured and worked in more than 30 countries, published 13 books, and written more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and newspaper columns. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Latin American program of Open Society Foundations. He holds a Licenciatura in sociology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, San Diego.

Claire Wardle is the Executive Director of First Draft, a non-profit dedicated to finding solutions to the challenges associated with trust and truth in the digital age. She was previously the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, head of social media for the UN Refugee Agency and Director of News Services for Storyful. She is one of the world’s experts on user-generated content, and has led two substantial research projects investigating how it is handled by news organizations.  She also sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Information and Entertainment.

Posted by Professor Stuart Allan
(On behalf of The Future of Journalism organising committee)