Call for paper | Number 9

2018-11-27

TOPIC Global Pacts on Ethics of Journalism and Communication

Among those who argue for the need for journalism ethical adjustments and those who argue that, rather than adjustments, deep changes are needed, there seems to be a consensus that the new media ecosystem, largely determined by the new requires a new normative pact between journalists, the media, the public, civil society and democracy.

The current changes seem to indicate that journalism today faces the challenge of a new re-foundation, as has happened in the transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. Professional journalism was then able to create a business model for companies, to think about professional structures, to create new languages and new narratives, to found and renew a social pact with audiences and society.

The challenge that the contemporary world appears to require is huge, but it does not look very different from what has been called for in the past. This challenge is a requirement of contemporary journalism's responsibility for its history, for its present and for the future.

The changes induced by information and communication technologies, the history of more than 150 years of professionalization of journalism, the awareness of a world at the scale of a village or of a global Polis are some factors that call for a reflection on the need for a renewal of the normative pact of journalism. Or, to recover the defiant words of the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, about a new ethic from a new perspective.

This debate has been intensifying in the last decade of the 20th century, especially in the academic field, but faces the need to extend to journalism, the media and civil society. Such development answers to the needs of contemporary societies, less hierarchical, more participatory and increasingly aware and sensitive to their diversity and plurality.

The call for articles to Mediapolis (no. 9) aims to take these major lines of thinking, already initiated at the 5th International Congress of Communication, Journalism and Public Space, on “Global Pacts for Information Quality”. This initiative sought to reflect on these problems from the reality of the Portuguese language countries. It is now intended to open and deepen this debate by following its main topics, as described below.

 

  1. New normative pacts for a changing journalism.
    1. What social functions for journalism of the future?
    2. New ethics for a new journalism?
    3. Transformations, risks and challenges for the profession of journalism.
    4. Changes in freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the era of the digital public sphere.

 

  1. Profession, organizational models, training, experiences and challenges of journalism governance.
  2. New models and new experiences of self-regulation and accountability.
  3. History and changes of journalistic ethics.
  4. New trends in journalism and media regulation policies.
  5. Socioprofessional changes of journalism and communication.

 

  1. The quality of information in the global Cosmopolis
  2. Fake News: strategies to combat the phenomena of propaganda and manipulation of information.
  3. Information and journalism as a means of empowerment and social development.
  4. Media literacy models and experiences in the Portuguese language sphere.

 

CALENDAR

Deadline for paper submission

31 January 2019

Review of papers

 31 January-15 March 2019 

Feedback to authors

 16-30 March 2019

Publication

 October 2019