Deadline for abstract submissions: 10 October 2016.

The 2017 Section Conference of the Journalism Studies Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) will take place in Odense, Denmark on 23-24 March 2017. We welcome submissions dealing with journalism and news work in the broadest sense. Professor Irene Costera Meijer from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam will be keynote speaker at the conference.

The theme of the conference is “Changing audiences – Changing Journalism”. Across Europe, audiences are occupying an ever more central place in journalism. Economic pressure, audience fragmentation, and declining readership have lead journalists to reconsider who the news is made for. The public plays an increasingly important role in the news making process, through user-generated content, by sharing news on social media networks, or by demanding more transparency. New media and online networks create new empowerment opportunities, and blur the boundaries between news producers and consumers. Audience metrics provide instant feedback about the preferences and tastes of the public, which is directly incorporated into the news making process.

These developments mark a clear shift from previous times when journalists were strongly oriented towards their peers and their sources, and kept the audience at arm’s length. The empowerment of the audience poses new questions for journalists and journalism scholars. Theoretically, it invites us to reconsider concepts like news values, and to develop new concepts, such as a public logic as opposed to a political and a media logic. From a normative perspective, it raises the question how far journalists should go to give in to the needs and wants of the audience. Similarly, new ways of addressing the audience, like constructive journalism, raise new ethical questions. Empirically, traditional journalism research methods as well as new methods like experiments or big data analysis can help to understand how journalism changes at a time when role of the audience is changing.

These and related questions will be addressed during the 2017 Section Conference of the Journalism Studies Section of ECREA. Besides papers focusing specifically on the role of the audience in journalism, we invite papers, which study cultural, political, economic, social and professional aspects of journalism and news work in a broad sense. We welcome submissions from all theoretical, epistemological and methodological perspectives.

The conference will feature traditional paper presentations, high-density sessions and coherent panels.

• Traditional paper presentations: Traditional paper presentations will take place in panels consisting of four to five papers.
• High density sessions: Participants present their research on a poster, which are put up in the hallway. The session starts with an introduction round, where each presenter introduces her poster in a brief talk. After these talks, the audience is invited to visit the posters and discuss the work with the researchers.
• Coherent panels: A limited number of slots will be available for coherent panels where one topic is addressed in four to five presentations, followed by a respondent. Preference will be given to panels with presenters from diverse backgrounds and affiliations.

SUBMIT: Submissions can be sent to ecrea@sam.sdu.dk no later than 10 October 2016. Please include in the email (1) the title of your paper, (2) an abstract of no more than 400 words, (3) names and affiliations of the authors, (4) an indication whether you want your paper to be considered for a high density session.

To submit a panel proposal, a 300 words rationale should be sent alongside a 150 words explanation per presentation, as well as the names and affiliations of presenters and respondent.

• Submission will undergo scholarly peer-review.
• Only one proposal per first author can be accepted.
• Notifications of acceptance will be issued in early November 2016.

More information can be found on our website: https://ecreajournalism2017.wordpress.com/ Please contact the conference convener, Arjen van Dalen, with questions at avd@sam.sdu.dk.