Digital journalism: Defining new political realities
Journal of Communication: Media Watch invites original manuscripts for submission for its May 2019 issue. Articles in no more than 7,000 words should be submitted by February 15, 2019. For submission guidelines and other details please see: https://www.mediawatchjournal.in
The theme for the May 2019 issue is:
Digital journalism: Defining new political realities
The sanguine predictions of Internet technology alleviating social disparities and opening up wider political participation have not necessarily come true. However its utility as a convenient tool for communication and journalism has been established beyond doubt.Apart from being a platform for everyday communication between citizens, the digital space is an ideal platform for politicians to bypass the traditional media and communicate directly with citizens. Normatively the digital media provides an accessible platform for debate and deliberation based on reason, logic and persuasive argumentation. This ideally provides the basis for political argument, consensus formation and finally democratic decision making. It is however not immune to commercial interests. It also leads to ‘echo chambers’ where people actively disparage the information with which they disagree while accepting compatible information almost without expending any cognitive effort. These biases lead to attitude polarization as exposure to the reconfirming information leads partisans to diverge in their attitudes; most importantly these biases are particularly pronounced for people with knowledge and strong preexisting attitudes.
Even international diplomacy is played out on the digital platform, at times at the cost of traditional edifices. For professional journalists, the Twitter feed is often the primary source of information. On the flipside highly sophisticated algorithms and global monopolies of key Internet services systematically distort the democratic potential of communication. In fact political radicalism across the ideological spectrum finds new support in the digital audience.
While global networks offer the potential for real change, we face an ever increasing challenge of political and economic elites taking over the means of digital communication.
The recent debate of fake news is in fact a continuation of the long history of the debate on the threats to quality information from banality, commercialization, sensationalism, infotainment and bias. The digital platform has spurred newer formats of journalism—investigative, interpretative and citizen journalism.
We seek papers to address the following broad themes:
- Theorizing Digital Journalism
- Confirmation/Disconfirmation Bias
- Policy challenges in the digital ecosystem
- Media framing of political radicalism
- Digital journalism workspace
- Framing of International relations.