Call for papers: Representations of Journalism and Journalists (new submission deadline)
Title: Representations of Journalism and Journalists
NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 10 February 2021
Author notification: 28 March 2021
Publication: 2nd semester 2021
Being often the object of social criticism, journalism is generally recognized as an activity that is essential for the promotion of high quality information, committed to factual truth and the public interest. This idea of its virtues is also associated with a romanticized view of the journalist as a professional at the service of a principle of revelation, discovery and exposure. Hence, journalism is often described as a vocation that requires specific abilities, such as inquisitiveness, critical thinking, accuracy and rigour, integrity, sharpness and tenacity in the task of observing and interpreting current events.
However, the social representation of journalism and journalists has been relatively ambiguous throughout history. For some 18th and 19th century intellectuals, journalism was a kind of subliterature. Balzac, for example, referred to them as “scribblers”, and in Eça de Queirós’s Os Maias, the character João da Ega called them “the scum of society”. With the expansion of the media and the professionalization of journalism, the public scrutiny of journalists became even more exacting. In a text published in 2003 in the journal Hermès, Dominique Wolton considered them as “frail heroes of modernity.”
The way in which we represent journalism is the result of a complex social construction in which journalists, media organizations, society in general, audiences in particular, and social, political cultural and economic institutions are involved. Over the last two decades, there has been a weakening of the pivotal role played by journalism in the mediation of public communication. Today, journalists fight for social recognition in the midst of social contexts and powers that either praise them or seek to be taken for them, to compete with their media power, and sometimes even to destroy them through discredit.
What image do we actually have of journalism and journalists? In a context of global information flows, what is our understanding of the function(s) of journalism? How has the status of journalists been interpreted in legal and social terms? What representations of journalism and journalists are produced or reproduced by other media such as cinema? How do journalists see themselves and how do they represent themselves in social terms? What view does journalism convey of itself and of journalists when the activity and its professionals are the object of the news or of opinion?
In this issue of the journal Mediapolis we propose to focus on the social and cultural representations of journalism and journalists. We welcome contributions that address the questions what is journalism and what are journalists, how do we view them and what status do we give them. The editors of this issue, Carlos Camponez, of the Centre for 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies/University of Coimbra, and Madalena Oliveira, of the Communication and Society Research Centre/University of Minho, invite authors to submit papers that address the following topics related to Representations of Journalism and Journalists:
- Representations of journalism in audiovisual fiction (cinema, TV series, soap operas…)
- Representations of journalism in literature
- Legal representations of journalism (legislation, internal norms, editorial statutes...)
- Opinion studies on the credibility of journalism
- Professional identity of journalists (both from the perspective of history and the sociology of professions)
- Representations of journalism and journalists in news media (coverage of issues related to the activity or professionals, opinion pieces …)
- Discourse studies and journalists’ representation of their profession
- Comparative analysis of journalism and media representations in different countries and continents
- Changes in the representations of journalists and the media
