Call for Papers:
JOURNALISM, PLATFORMS, AND PUBLIC INTEREST TECHNOLOGIES
Applying PIT to Rebuild Trust, Infrastructure, and Civic Purpose in Journalism
Pre-conference to the ECREA Journalism Studies Section 2026
April 8, 2026 – University of Groningen
Conference Topic
In recent years, Public Interest Technology (PIT) has emerged as a field devoted to rethinking the institutions, infrastructures, and technology-embedded services that shape society for the common good. Defined by Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank (2021) as “the application of design, data, and delivery to advance the public interest and promote the public good in the digital age,” PIT has largely concentrated on governmental and nonprofit contexts. Yet journalism and media studies are increasingly recognizing the value of this framework for interrogating—and redesigning—the technological systems that underpin news production, distribution, and engagement.
This turn is overdue. Journalism’s long-standing mission to hold power accountable has been widely understood as foundational to democracy (Helberger, 2019; Hampton, 2009). But that mission is under strain. Privately controlled digital infrastructures (Luitse, 2024; Simon, 2022), opaque platform architectures, metrics-driven newsroom cultures (Dodds et al., 2023; Schaetz, 2024; Christin, 2020), and rapidly advancing automation systems are reshaping the conditions under which journalism can operate in the public interest (Sevignani et al., 2025). These shifts raise urgent questions about how journalists might adopt PIT principles to critically assess the technologies they depend on and how the field can imagine alternatives that better serve democratic needs.
This conference invites scholars, practitioners, and technologists to examine what is working, what is changing, and what tensions arise as journalism adapts its public mission through the lenses of design, data, and delivery. How might PIT reshape journalistic practices, media organizations, platform relationships, and collaborative models within newsrooms, across media systems, with platforms, and alongside public and civic actors?
Proposed Topics:
- Conceptualizations of Public Interest Technology (PIT) for journalism.
- Journalistic practices, in a broad sense, including fact-checking, open-source investigations, data journalism, visual investigations, and others, particularly when they advance the public interest.
- New theorizations of the intersection between journalism, technology, (digital) infrastructure, power, and publics.
- Experimentation in newsrooms (investigative collaboration, innovation labs, participatory and community-centered design, alternative distribution models) that reflects journalism’s evolving role as an architect of public-interest infrastructures.
- Examinations of tensions between platform-driven technological logics and public-oriented visions of journalism.
- New organizational, financial, technological, and collaborative models that are reshaping possibilities for PIT.
- Platform governance, algorithmic visibility, content moderation, and data control that directly influence journalism’s capacity to function in the public interest.
- Publics and communities that are emerging as co-designers, co-producers, and evaluators of journalistic knowledge and delivery systems, redefining trust, legitimacy, and shared meaning.
- PIT as a form of critical media infrastructure that creates spaces in which citizens can engage in respectful, transparent, and equitable dialogue, offering a counterbalance to commercial platforms.
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 on research projects that are still in progress. For those, the conference provides an opportunity to discuss their theoretical and methodological approaches, research designs, data collection, and other matters of interest.
The pre-conference aims to bring together researchers from diverse backgrounds. Experts from outside academia are also welcome, particularly to foster discussion between scholars and practitioners about central actors in the implementation of AI in journalism. In addition, we specifically encourage submissions from young and emerging scholars, particularly from the YECREA network.
When submitting, please note
- The conference will be held in English.
- 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 or a work-in-progress talk.
- Please indicate whether the first author is a PhD student.
- The abstracts should include the main idea/argument, research questions, theoretical perspectives, and/or information on methodology and empirical findings (if relevant).
What, where, and when to submit
- Abstracts of no more than 500 words (references excluded) should be sent to doddsrojas@wisc.edu by 17 January 2026, 23:59 (Central European Time)
- All submitted abstracts will be reviewed. Acceptance notifications will be sent out on February 31, 2026.
- Deadline for confirmation of participation is March 10, 2026.
The pre-conference will take place on April 8, 2026, at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Groningen.
There is no conference fee. Participants with special needs are kindly asked to contact the organizers.
Conference Organization
- Tomás Dodds, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Nadja Schaetz, University of Hamburg
- Agustin Ferrari Braun, University of Amsterdam
- Seth Lewis, University of Oregon
- Bronwyn Jones, University of Edinburgh
- Colin Porlezza, Università della Svizzera italiana
- James Meese, RMIT University