Call for abstracts on Public Interest Technologies (PITs) in journalism

In collaboration with the Public Tech Media Lab of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Journalism Practice is inviting abstracts for its special issue on ‘Public Interest Technologies (PITs)’. It welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions, whether computational, ethnographic, comparative, historical, or case-based.

Thematics

In recent years, PIT has emerged as a field devoted to rethinking institutions, infrastructures, and services embedded in technology for the common good. While PIT has primarily focused on governments and nonprofit sectors, journalism and media studies have recently begun to explore the possibilities that arise when this framework is applied to their field.

Proposed topics include :

• Journalistic practices, in a broad sense. These include fact-checking, open-source investigations, data journalism, visual investigations, and others. This is particularly relevant when such practices advance the public interest.
• New theorisations of the intersection between journalism, technology, (digital) infrastructure, power, and publics.
• Experimentation in newsrooms. This includes investigative collaboration, innovation labs, participatory and community-centred design, and alternative distribution models.
• The integration of AI and automation. This integration generates tensions between platform-driven technological logics and public-oriented visions of journalism grounded in equity, accountability, and good public outcomes.
• New organisational, financial, technological, and collaborative models. These models reshape possibilities for journalism oriented to design, data, and delivery for the public.
• Platform governance, algorithmic visibility, content moderation, and data control. These factors directly influence journalism’s capacity to function in the public interest.
• Publics and communities emerging as co-designers, co-producers, and evaluators of journalistic knowledge and delivery systems. This process redefines trust, legitimacy, and shared meaning.
• Global South and peripheral media ecologies. These contexts illuminate vulnerabilities and innovations that help rethink journalism’s future beyond Western-centric assumptions.
• The political economy of the infrastructure and technology ecosystem within which PIT and journalism operate.
• New forms of data governance, openness, and interpretations. These allow critique of traditional journalistic (or news) structures and open avenues for alternative and innovative organisations, processes, and partnerships.

How to apply 

Applicants should submit an extended abstract (500 words) along with a 100–150-word biography for each author. Extended abstracts should be sent by email to doddsrojas@wisc.edu.

Selected authors will be invited to submit full papers of approximately 8,000 words. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review and must be submitted via ScholarOne, selecting this Special Issue on the submission system.

Deadline for abstract submission: 01 April 2026

Deadline for full papers: 15 October 2026

For more information, please visit this page.