Pre-Conference: Journalism, Platforms, and Public Interest Technologies

Pre-conference to the ECREA Journalism Studies Section 2026

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.

Participation in this conference is by invitation only. For more information or any other questions, please contact Tomás Dodds at doddsrojas@wisc.edu.