Journalism (Special issue)

Deadline: November 20, 2026

Guest Editors: Pedro Jerónimo, Alba Diez-Gracia, and Joy Jenkins

Rationale and contribution

Local journalism is commonly discussed through a crisis of provision: newsroom shrinking and closures, diminishing coverage, weakened business models, and the expansion of news deserts. These developments are fundamental, but they do not fully explain how people experience local information in everyday life. The presence of a local news outlet does not necessarily result in attention, engagement, trust, knowledge, or civic connection. Conversely, weak, or absent journalism does not always lead people to experience themselves as uninformed, as local knowledge can be assembled through social media, messaging groups, search engines, local authorities, community organisations, creators, and interpersonal networks.

This Special Issue proposes an audience-centred agenda focused on a central question: how do people decide that they are sufficiently informed about the places where they live, and what role does journalism play in retaining, losing, or transforming in that judgement? We use local informedness as an organising lens for examining perceived information sufficiency, demonstrable knowledge, news use and non-use, selective avoidance, incidental exposure, trust, relevance, place attachment, participation/engagement, and unequal access to local public information.

Local news avoidance is an important part of this agenda, but it is not the only form of disconnection. Residents might deliberately avoid news, use it only intermittently, fail to recognise it within platform feeds, distrust it, find it irrelevant to their concerns, lack affordable or accessible provision, or replace it with non-journalistic sources. These processes should not be collapsed into a single category. Uniting them allows the special issue to interrogate when local journalism becomes present, absent, useful, avoidable, or irrelevant in people's understanding of place.

The issue therefore connects audience studies with research on local journalism, news deserts, media systems, platforms, information inequalities, participation/engagement, place, and community. It also moves beyond the local newspaper by inviting work on radio, television, magazines, public service and community media, digital-native outlets, newsletters, podcasts, messaging applications, creators, and mixed local information ecosystems. Internationally comparative research is particularly encouraged, as are studies of underrepresented territories, media systems, and publics.

Scope and possible themes

We invite theoretical and empirical contributions addressing at least two of the following dimensions: audience relationships, local information conditions, and consequences for journalism and public life. Possible themes include:

• Local news avoidance, passive non-use, weak news habits, fatigue, alienation, distrust, and constrained access;

• Perceived local informedness, information sufficiency, uncertainty, and the relationship between subjective informedness and objective knowledge;

• Trust, relevance, representation, and whether audiences perceive local news as made for people like them;

• News deserts, underserved and marginalized communities, rural and peripheral regions, urban neighbourhoods, minority-language publics, diasporic populations, and inequalities within apparently well-served markets;

• Audience practices across newspapers, radio, television, magazine, public service, community and Indigenous media, digital-native outlets, newsletters, podcasts, social platforms, and messaging applications;

• Relationships among journalism, municipal communication, civic organisations, activists, businesses, influencers, interpersonal networks, search engines, and AI-mediated interfaces;

• Algorithmic visibility, incidental exposure, search, notifications, and the conditions under which local journalism is encountered, missed, misattributed, or decontextualised;

• Consequences for local knowledge and perceptions of place, civic engagement, accountability, belonging, access to services, media literacy, newsroom innovation, policy, and democratic life.

Approaches. We welcome qualitative, quantitative, computational, ethnographic, experimental, participatory, historical, and mixed-methods research, as well as theoretical interventions and systematic comparative work. Single-country studies should offer conceptual innovation, distinctive evidence, or wider comparative relevance. Studies combining audience evidence with content, organisational, infrastructural, or policy analysis are especially welcome.

First-stage submission: extended abstracts

Prospective authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of 800-1,000 words and not exceeding two A4 pages, including references. Extended abstracts should be formatted in Times New Roman, 12-point font, single-spaced, with standard margins. The title and authors’ names, affiliations, and contact details are excluded from the word count. The abstract should state: (1) the research problem and conceptual contribution; (2) research question(s) or central argument; (3) method or analytical approach; (4) empirical context and data, where applicable; (5) expected findings or argument; and (6) explicit fit with the Special Issue. Please also include the article title, author name(s), affiliation(s), corresponding author's email address, and three to five keywords.

Send abstracts to pj@ubi.pt and alba.diez.gracia@usal.es by 20 November 2026. Authors will be notified by 18 December 2026.

Full manuscripts and review

Selected authors will be invited to submit a full manuscript through Journalism's electronic submission system by 30 June 2027. Full articles must not exceed 8,000 words, including references, tables, figures, charts, and all other elements. Invitation following the abstract stage does not guarantee publication. All manuscripts will be screened for quality and scope and will undergo the journal's standard double-blind peer-review process, with at least two external reviewers. Guest Editors will not act as reviewers. No more than one article per person, whether single-authored or co-authored, may appear in the collection. The planned collection will comprise approximately twelve research articles and may include an editorial introduction.

Indicative timetable

• Call for extended abstracts launched: 1 October 2026
  
• Extended abstract submission deadline: 20 November 2026
  
• Notification of abstract decisions and invitations to submit full manuscripts: 18 December 2026
  
• Confirmation of participation by invited authors: 8 January 2027
  
• Full manuscript submission deadline: 30 June 2027
  
• First-round peer review: 1 July–15 September 2027
  
• Revised manuscript submission deadline: 15 November 2027
  
• Further review and final decisions: 16 November 2027–15 January 2028
  
• Online First publication: from February/March 2028 onwards

Guest Editors

• Pedro Jerónimo, University of Beira Interior, Portugal, pj@ubi.pt

• Alba Diez-Gracia, University of Salamanca, Spain, alba.diez.gracia@usal.es

• Joy Jenkins, University of Missouri, United States, joyjenkins@missouri.edu