Journalism Studies (Special Issue)

Deadline: 15 November 2025

Through a series of empirical and theoretical investigations, this special issue aims to encourage and develop a robust discussion of and debate around mapping and related practices undertaken by journalism scholars to understand and analyze media ecosystems.

A global decline in the number of news services – especially at the local level – has raised alarm among journalists, academics, policymakers and community members alike (Weber and Matthews, 2024). In an attempt to make sense of – and document – this rapidly changing landscape, there is increasing emphasis on mapping techniques to visualize where news outlets exist (or not) within and across countries. Mapping and other visual techniques are increasingly being applied to measure and assess ongoing changes in the health of local media systems. These approaches are married with others such as textual analysis and topic modeling to better understand the nuances of what is being produced by journalists and where.

The pace of growth of research mapping and analyzing media landscapes is such that there have been few moments to pause and reflect on the state of research in this domain. As such, there has been little attention paid to the methodology of mapping in journalism studies. This risks a laissez-faire approach to the use of mapping in journalism scholarship, especially given mapping is broad and multi-disciplinary and afforded with rich and rigorous methodological histories and practices.

A typology of mapping suggests there are four ways in which journalism scholars are using mapping in their research: digital cartographic mapping, network mapping, spatial cognitive mapping and loose metaphoric references to mapping (McAdam and Hess, 2022). This special issue aims to explore the use of cartographic mapping to map geographic dimensions (see, for example: Negreira-Rey, Vazquez-Herrero and Lopez-Garcia, 2023; Lindgren, Corbett, & Hodson, 2020), network mapping to understand spatial connections and social cognitive mapping to explore concepts.

This special issue also aims to explore the theoretical and methodological frames - or, in other words, the ‘why’ - that guide the use of mapping as a method. Existent literature has explored broader related concepts such as theorizing about the spaces and places of journalism, notably, the ‘geographic turn’ that emphasizes the ‘places’ news is produced as well as the digital and physical spaces of journalism. Theoretically, this aligns with the ‘networked public sphere’ and extends into research on audience interaction and global connectivity. Reese (2016) argues the ‘new journalistic ecosystem’ presents fresh methodological challenges. This special issue provides a platform to discuss these methodological challenges, as well as any theoretical possibilities associated with the use of mapping.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible themes to address within the framework outlined above:
● Theoretical developments enabled through evolving methods:

○ Why is mapping being used in journalism studies?

○ What theories, concepts and/or methodologies can scholars draw on to guide or frame their use of mapping?

○ In what ways - if any - does mapping facilitate theoretical and methodological advancement of journalism studies more broadly?

○ Papers that connect mapping methods to specific theoretical discussions.

● The application of the method:

○ Ways mapping is used, for example digital cartography to map news deserts, network maps to map social media links, spatial/cognitive mapping and participatory mapping to understand audience spatial relationships.

○ Challenges associated with producing maps (such as the cost, time and skills involved) and how these may be overcome.

● The value of mapping

○ Benefits of visual communication to community, industry and policymakers

○ How scholars value mapping as a method for data collection/analysis.

○ Approaches for visual analysis and visual communication afforded by mapping.

Submission instructions
The format of the special issue is full research articles of max. 9000 words, inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, endnotes. When submitting your manuscript please select the "mapping journalism" issue. The articles will appear online once accepted, and in an issue of Journalism Studies once all articles are completed.

Please email mapping.journalism@gmail.com with any questions.

More information:
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/mapping-news-as-a-critical-method-for-understanding-journalism/?_ga=2.67220049.1575866221.1747670144-995254403.1747670144