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Abstract

Across a number of disciplines, hybridity is regularly invoked when two previously distinct elements – whether objects, concepts, frameworks, practices, models, mediums or institutions – are brought together. However, this is often done with a vague theoretical nod. Labeled a hybrid and left at the level of broad theory, scholarship has tended to ignore a critical issue: what happens when the disparate elements of a hybrid are introduced in practice? This conceptual paper takes the case of academic explanatory journalism, a nascent intentional collaborative practice between academic authors and journalist editors, in order to illustrate how the theoretical concept of hybridity plays out in practice. This particular case presents a number of opportunities and benefits within a Western democratic context. However, our examination highlights that without a more nuanced discussion of how hybridization plays out in real life, its potential benefits are compromised. We propose a five-step framework that can be applied to other examples of hybridity, across varied disciplines beyond media and communication studies. This five-step framework helps uncover the complications that might arise when disparate elements are hybridized, moving from theory into practice. The approach helps create the space and understanding needed to design solutions pre-emptively.

Keywords

Academic explanatory journalism explanatory journalism hybridity academic journalism knowledge mobilization

Introduction

Hybridity is perhaps one of the few truly transdisciplinary concepts, invoked across a swathe of academic disciplines when previously distinct elements – whether objects, theories, frameworks, practices, models, mediums or institutions – are brought together, intentionally or otherwise. From its roots as a biological concept and its subsequent application to language and culture, the concept of hybridity has made its way into virtually every corner of academia, from psychology and sociology to business administration and political science to cultural and media studies (Bahri, 2006; Chadwick, 2013; Hallin et al., 2021; Hutnyk, 2005; Jackson and Albrecht, 2018; Stross, 1999). However, as it has moved from its more tangible origins related to breeding new types of plants or animals to its current, more abstract descriptions of political orders, social systems and personal identities, hybridity is often claimed with only a theoretical nod that belies its complexity and nuance. Especially in the context of the social sciences and humanities, hybrids are often considered as possible solutions to real-world challenges or seen as synergistic options for more effective outcomes. Yet, these expected (or hoped for) benefits are potentially compromised when hybridity is left at a surface level. Such surface-level views ignore the ways in which hybridity may depend upon the specific constituent elements or contexts, and often focuses on opportunities without deep reflection on challenges.

This paper offers a preliminary template for moving a given hybrid approach from theory into practice. Taking the case of academic explanatory journalism – a nascent hybrid approach involving intentional collaboration between academics and journalists (Fleerackers et al., 2022b; Young and Hermida, 2020) – we provide a more nuanced discussion of how hybridization could play out when operationalized and show how its potential success is compromised when its constituent elements aren’t well understood. To illustrate this, we propose five simple but important steps that move us from general theory to a deeper conception, taking into consideration how different elements of a hybrid function independently, contrasting the various epistemologies, motivations, values, practices and institutional cultures at play, and identifying complications that could arise when two disparate domains are blended.

Recognizing there are multilayered understandings of journalistic cultures around the world (Bird, 2005; Mellado, 2020), it’s important to note that we situate our case within a normative Western democratic context, where journalism practices traditionally emphasize the ideals of truth, verification, independence and holding power to account, all in service of the public interest (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021). In this same context, institutions of higher learning have traditionally valued academic freedom, reason, evidence, rigor and critique (Barnett, 2021). To be clear, we are neither claiming that journalism and/or academia ought to subscribe to these values, nor are we arguing specifically for (or against) collaboration between journalists and scholars. Rather, our aim is to show that these particular understandings of each present specific opportunities – and specific challenges – when merged.

In providing a more nuanced understanding of the hybrid nature of the particular case of academic explanatory journalism, we both offer a way to operationalize this specific practice for future work to build from, and we offer a practical framework for evaluating the potential of other hybrid situations which can be repurposed by a variety of actors across any number of disciplines and contexts.

The case of academic explanatory journalism

As journalism moves beyond its traditional boundaries in the wake of evolving information ecosystems and disrupted business models, the field is opening up (willingly or not) to hybrid variations (Hallin et al., 2021; Reese, 2021). One such example is The Conversation, an international digital journalism start-up with editions in 10 countries,¹ where scholars pitch and produce ‘evidence-based explanatory journalism and commentary’ (Young and Hermida, 2020: 120) in collaboration with journalists, who edit and format the articles for a public audience. While underdeveloped in the literature, this intentional collaboration between scholars as authors and journalist as editors has been referred to as academic explanatory journalism (Fleerackers et al., 2022b; Young and Hermida, 2020).

The term first came into use in the context of the Canadian edition of The Conversation (Explanatory Journalism Report, 2021; Milton, 2022; Tworek et al., 2021). While not clearly defined in current literature, this blend of practices is also not entirely captured by existing concepts. It is not entirely explanatory journalism, which falls under the purview of professional journalists attempting to give more context to the news of the day (Forde, 2007). Nor is it wholly academic journalism, in any of its variations, whether scholars doing research about journalism, doing journalism as research or teaching journalism (Bacon, 2012). Neither is it science journalism, where journalists still hold the reigns, while scholars remain on the periphery (Guenther and Joubert, 2021; Hermida and Young, 2019). In practice, academics and journalists have traditionally worked independently, only invoking the other in service of their own goals (Hermida and Young, 2019; Zelizer, 2008). A scholar submits their column to a newspaper. The scholar writes what they want; the paper publishes as they see fit. A journalist calls an academic for the requisite ‘expert opinion’. The scholar may or may not provide it; the journalist may or may not use it. This is not to suggest an antagonistic relationship is the default (although one often exists), but that scholars and journalists each typically work within their own domains, according to their own ethical frameworks and professional standards. Even efforts to collaborate often tend to be unilateral and intermittent, with each trying to figure out how to fit into the other’s paradigms for a particular project (Davis, 2021; Scheuer, 2007). In academic explanatory journalism, however, collaboration is reciprocal, and the end goal is shared. Rather than scholars simply leveraging journalistic techniques, or journalists simply relying on the expert knowledge of scholars, the hybrid approach of academic explanatory journalism requires ongoing, intentional collaboration, and the active participation of both.

In theory, this hybrid approach has the potential to harness the strengths of each domain, downplaying certain limitations of the other. Where journalism tends toward oversimplification, scholars can offer explanatory expertise (Duffy, 2015; Remler et al., 2014). Where academic writing can often be inaccessible, both logistically and intellectually, journalism has the ability to reach wide audiences with the most relevant information (MacGregor and Cooper, 2020). Where reporters face time constraints and must make snap judgments, researchers have relatively more time and the ‘ability and patience to tackle complex phenomena’ (Remler et al., 2014: 360). And where journalism has faced unrelenting slashed revenues and significant job losses, despite budget restraints in academia some academic funding models have the potential to supplement (Hermida et al., 2022; Remler et al., 2014). These combined strengths create the opportunity for academic explanatory journalism to fill critical gaps in a vastly changed information landscape (Remler et al., 2014), mobilize the expert knowledge of scholars (Duffy, 2015), provide policy makers with reliable and usable content in an increasingly complex information ecosystem (Cairney and Oliver, 2020), and make richer contextual information more accessible to the general public. In theory, at least.

Hybridity operationalized

The concept of hybridity originates in biology and horticulture, where it refers to a new type of plant or animal that results from the breeding of two distinct ‘parents’ (Stross, 1999). This concept then became prominent in cultural studies, anchored particularly in the post-colonial theory discourses of Homi Bhaba (Bahri, 2006; Young, 1994). Over the past two decades, hybridity has taken root across every manner of discipline, finding its value as a ‘usefully slippery category, purposefully contested and deployed to claim change’ (Hutnyk, 2005). In business, it is used to describe hybrid organizations, an intersection between the traditionally distinct categories of economic and social enterprises (Shepherd et al., 2019). In social psychology, hybrid identities help to conceptualize overlapping aspects of people’s social identities (Kustatscher et al., 2015). In political science, hybrid political orders are referred to (Jackson and Albrecht, 2018). Public policy looks at hybrid affordable housing models (Nguyen et al., 2012). Diasporas, migrant communities, language dialects, globalization, technology, conflict resolution, international development all invoke hybridity as theoretical frameworks.

We situate the particular case of academic explanatory journalism within communication and media studies, where it has become commonplace to label new and emergent media forms and journalistic practices as ‘hybrid’. Underpinned by Andrew Chadwick’s ‘hybrid media system’ (Chadwick, 2013), hybridity has emerged as a key concept used to analyze various social and cultural practices, systems and forms, where ‘one practice joins with another to create something new, a pastiche, a mashup, or mélange’ (Reese, 2022: 198). For Chadwick, hybridity is the outcome and process of newer and older technologies being integrated into a media system that continually shifts the tools, tactics, and practices of actors within that system (Chadwick, 2013). Dubbed the ‘hybrid turn’ in journalism studies (Witschge et al., 2019), the concept of hybridity has been key in analyzing transformations in how news and information is produced, shared and consumed in contemporary media ecosystems, where digital technologies have disrupted the business models of legacy news outlets, and precipitated changes in the routines, institutional practices, professional identities and ideologies that many once considered to be defining characteristics of journalism (Hermida and Young, 2017; Mellado et al., 2017; Rauch, 2023; Reese, 2021; Ruotsalainen et al., 2021; Splendore and Brambilla, 2021; Uusitalo et al., 2021).

The vagueness of these definitions has led to hybridity being considered as a sensitizing concept (Hallin et al., 2021), often claimed with little more than a theoretical nod to Chadwick (2013) that belies the complexity and nuance of a true hybrid. The case of academic explanatory journalism can usefully highlight what can be gained from a more nuanced interrogation into how hybridity might actually play out in practice. Scholarship and journalism may well appear to be natural collaborators (Davis, 2021), aligned by several commonalities (Duffy, 2015; Remler et al., 2014), but a deeper look into the case of academic explanatory journalism reveals some of the fundamental complexities that can arise when a hybridized approach is operationalized. Within the Western democratic context, journalism and academia are each guided by different epistemological assumptions, underlying motivations, ethical frameworks, and standards of practice. Without consideration of these differences, there is a risk of philosophical and practical misalignments, gaps, misunderstandings and clashes that could affect the accuracy, integrity and effectiveness of both the scholarship and the journalism involved, in effect compromising the very opportunities this hybrid approach was meant to achieve.

Given that all cultural forms and social practices are arguably in some way hybrids of previously existing ones, Hallin et al. (2021) suggest that hybridity is best conceived as a cycle, in which new forms and practices emerge from previously existing ones, becoming stabilized and institutionalized through rules, norms and established practices, before being disrupted by changes that precipitate a new phase of hybridization. From this perspective, they argue there is no generalized theory of hybridity; rather there is a ‘need to theorize particular forms of hybridity in detail’ Hallin et al. (2021: 3). This is exactly the task at hand: we theorize the particular hybrid form of academic explanatory journalism, and in doing so propose a framework others might build upon to theorize other particular forms of hybridity.

Five steps for evaluating hybrid approaches

To show what this process of theorizing a particular instance of hybridity might look like, we suggest five simple, but important, steps (see Figure 1), which we apply to the case of academic explanatory journalism in order to illustrate the complications that might arise when moving a hybrid from theory into practice. We identified these steps by reflecting on the particular form of hybridity present in the case of academic explanatory journalism, rooted in related work with The Conversation Canada, where there is a tendency within the literature to jump straight to the potential opportunities presented by academic explanatory journalism (Fleerackers et al., 2022b; Young and Hermida, 2020), without capturing questions or assumptions embedded in the practice.

Figure 1.

Five steps for evaluating hybrid approaches.

This exercise begins by breaking down the different elements that comprise a hybrid (Step 1) and examining the context that has led to these components coming together (Step 2). In the process the characteristics or features – related institutions, actors, affordances, cultures, values, ideologies, ethical frameworks, standards of practice, etc. – that accompany each element should be identified, along with related strengths and weaknesses. This can help reveal not only potential opportunities (Step 3), but also where the intersection of these features might create gaps, misunderstandings, conflicts or other friction points (Step 4). In doing so, responses, solutions, or other options for addressing friction points can be considered, chosen or crafted proactively (Step 5), rather than reactively, creating greater chances for a hybrid to fulfill the theoretical possibilities.

While we are applying this framework to the case of academic explanatory journalism, we neither seek to legitimize this particular hybrid approach, nor to argue for or against it. Rather, we aim to systematically consider the components of a hybrid and how they come together in practice, as well as both the opportunities and challenges this presents. While we apply the framework to this particular case, other scholars and practitioners studying or working within hybridized contexts across varied disciplines can apply and build from our proposed framework within other particular instances of hybridity.

Step 1: Breaking down the core elements

The first step in exploring how a hybrid might play out in practice requires an understanding of the constituent elements – be they objects, concepts, frameworks, practices, models, mediums, institutions or something else – that are being brought together. In the case of academic explanatory journalism, we consider the practices of academic journalism and explanatory journalism, as well as the domains of academia and journalism. While we elaborate on the first two in this section, we note that the two domains of academia and journalism – along with their related histories, definitions, and institutional cultures – are much too broad to explore in this context. Instead, we highlight certain features of each in the following steps in order to demonstrate the most salient points.

The term academic journalism has been used to designate a number of practices over the years, including traditional scholars producing journalism related to their research, contemporary scholars producing journalism in lieu of research, or the work done by journalists who have made the jump to academia, most often to teach journalism (Bacon, 2012; Clarke, 2015). Journalism courses taught within universities are sometimes branded as academic journalism programs, although they are often professionally oriented, with limited exposure to traditional research methods and philosophy (Jaakkola and Uotila, 2020). Remler et al. (2014) define academic journalism simply as ‘journalism produced by university faculty’ and make a strong case for its potential to address a range of problems facing both journalism and universities in the 21st century. A related term, journalism academics, has also been used to refer to traditional scholars conducting research about journalism (Bacon, 2012).

The concept of explanation in journalism is not new. Criticism about the lack of context in news reports can be found as early as 1885 (Forde, 2007), and the 1930s and 40s gave rise to ‘interpretive reporting’, which encouraged journalists to put facts into context (Parisi, 1999). A ‘counterweight to the breaking news, in-the-moment type of journalism that offers readers speed over nuance’ (Hudak, 2016), explanatory journalism (and a myriad related terms and definitions) typically includes two features: first it seeks to give context to news (Parisi, 1999) and second it attempts to explain complicated events and processes (Schudson, 2008). In 1985, the Pulitzer Prize added a category for explanatory journalism (renamed explanatory reporting in 1998) for stories that provide a ‘deeper understanding of a significant and complex subject, enabling readers to put news about it into a meaningful context’ (Pulitzer, n.d.). More recently, the term had a sort of revival in 2014 with the launch of the digital news start-up Vox, which brands itself as an explanatory journalism outlet whose mission is to not just report what has happened, but to explain what has happened (Klein et al., 2014).

One further consideration, which draws parallels with explanatory journalism, is the well-established (and well-studied) field of science journalism (Allan, 2011; Dunwoody, 2021; Guenther, 2019; Guenther et al., 2019). While many scholars may take up the mantel of science communication, science journalism falls specifically to professional journalists working independently with the primary goal of making the scientific knowledge of experts accessible for lay audiences (Dunwoody, 2021; Guenther and Joubert, 2021). Although they do not label it academic explanatory journalism as such, Guenther and Joubert (2021) point out, specifically in relation to The Conversation Africa, that the publication’s collaboration between scientist authors and journalist editors ‘deviates from the norms of traditional mainstream science journalism’ (p. 1043), and challenge the previously defined roles of both the scientists (who gain more control of their own content) and journalists (who lose some editorial independence).

Notably, the journalists, academics, and institutions that contribute to these kinds of journalism do not necessarily do so in a monolithic way. While we can speak generally about how these actors are involved, the reality is different actors and institutions have varying levels of power and resources, as well as norms and standards, even within their own domain. For example, within Western academia there is often more funding for natural sciences than social sciences or humanities (Boroush and Guci, 2022; Government of Canada, 2023). Meanwhile, some disciplines tend to embed stakeholder engagement and knowledge mobilization in the study design and data collection process (e.g., participant action research (Ottosson, 2003)) while others may typically only engage in knowledge mobilization once all data is collected and analyzed (as is standard in natural sciences, among others). These factors could impact how and when academics choose to engage, or not, in academic explanatory journalism. These are just a few examples that highlight why it is important to consider constituent elements and suggest that context (Step 2) must also be considered.

Further, in breaking down these constituent components, the complexity of each individual element and the varied ways they are similar, dissimilar, and overlapping or distinct become more evident. This is an essential backdrop for the subsequent steps.

Step 2: Examining the context

The second step in developing a deeper understanding of how a hybrid might play out in practice includes exploring the context in which its constituent elements (outlined in Step 1) are being brought together. In the case of academic explanatory journalism, there have been seismic shifts in both fields brought on by a rapidly evolving information ecosystem, including changes in the traditional roles of journalists, an increased demand on scholars for knowledge mobilization efforts, and an ongoing need for innovative business models within the journalism industry.

The shift to digital media has impacted journalism practices and the work of news organizations so substantially it has regularly been labeled a crisis throughout the 21^st century (Alexander et al., 2016; Benson, 2018; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021; Wilkinson and Winseck, 2019). Media organizations have lost long-held monopolies over both the resources of production and the distribution of information (Jarvis, 2014). Meanwhile, this digital ecology of information – what Boyer (2010) describes as an exceedingly challenging and complex ‘ecology of content and media in the digital era’ (p. 86) has shifted the traditional job description of journalist, where the work is increasingly focused on organizing, curating, distilling and explaining the work of others, rather than creating it themselves (Boyer, 2010). In a context where others can publish anything at any time, longstanding journalistic roles, such as gatekeeping (which refers to control over information flows, in particular, which information becomes news), and agenda-setting (the media’s influence over the public agenda by way of controlling what information news audiences receive) is no longer controlled exclusively by journalists (Brosius et al., 2015; Bruns, 2017; Cools et al., 2022; Evans et al., 2022; Feezell, 2018; Ferrucci and Eldridge, 2022; Maier and Peter Miltner, 2015; Tandoc, 2018). The affordances of digital media have allowed a range of perspectives to circulate quickly and widely, eroding (to some extent) the power and authority traditionally held by media organizations, and making space for non-journalist actors, such as news audiences, social media users, tech companies, and academics, to become active participants (Evans et al., 2022; Hermida and Young, 2019; Jungherr et al., 2020; Moore and Tambini, 2018; Perreault and Ferrucci, 2020).

Universities have long occupied a central role in the media and information ecosystem, in particular as employers of experts whose commentary and analyses are regularly featured in news media. Despite this prominence, however, scholars have traditionally been considered as ‘peripheral actors’ (Hermida and Young, 2019; Holton and Belair-Gagnon, 2018), acting as external information sources for news content produced independently by journalists. However, there is increasing pressure for scholars across disciplines to engage directly with players outside of academia like policymakers, practitioners and the public (Cairney and Oliver, 2020) and for academic work to have some sort of measurable ‘impact’ (Ali and Herzog, 2019). As they explore alternatives for sharing their expertise, scholars are stepping out from behind the historically cryptic pages of peer-reviewed journals and academic textbooks, circumventing journalists and mainstream news media, and moving into some of the above-noted spaces created by digital media, for example, making podcasts, writing blogs, creating substacks, or running YouTube channels. As academics engage in such knowledge mobilization activities (and are increasingly being expected to), established norms about what qualifies as a legitimate research output are being challenged. In this context, producing journalism is increasingly recognized for its potential to contribute to scholarship (Niblock, 2012).

As digital technologies have disrupted the funding models of traditional news media, both the journalism industry and journalism scholars have looked for alternatives, including crowd-funding, not-for-profits, digital start-ups, diversification, journalism as a service provider and training journalism students to be entrepreneurs (Cagé, 2016; Jääskeläinen and Yanatma, 2020; Jarvis, 2014; Kantola, 2016; Young and Hermida, 2020). The hybrid approach advanced by The Conversation, which has been branded as academic explanatory journalism, grew out of an academic-led effort to test the sustainability of a not-for-profit business model (Hermida and Young, 2019; Young and Hermida, 2020).

Step 3: Identifying potential opportunities

The third step in evaluating how a hybrid might play out in practice is the place where many people begin: imagining the possibilities and opportunities that hybridization might enable.

Despite a ‘historically thorny relationship’ (Dunwoody et al., 2009: p. 300) between the two institutions, scholarship and journalism have fundamental commonalities that make them ‘natural collaborators’ (Davis, 2021: 216). Both are ‘concerned with investigation and increasing our understanding of the world around us’ (Duffy, 2015). Both are seeking some version of ‘truth’ – the question of how this truth is conceived is something we will come back to – and both are guided by professional ethics ‘designed to preserve the integrity of their inquiry’ (Davis, 2021: 216). Duffy (2015: 5) suggests they share the ‘same genes of investigation and deliberation’, requiring both to be thoughtful, skeptical and inquisitive, challenging biases and assumptions in order to reach accurate conclusions (Davis, 2021). Both are working to be accessible to particular audiences – academics have to simplify complex topics for their students, journalists do the same for the general public (Duffy, 2015). Journalism and scholarship are also both expert intensive, with high costs and low willingness of broad audiences to pay (Remler et al., 2014). Some of the methods that journalists and academics use in their work also have parallels, as do some stylistic conventions. Ethnographers have observed that the research techniques journalists use in their process of reporting (typically involving interviews and observation), are similar to those used in ethnographic fieldwork (Bird, 2005; Pedelty, 2010).

In this step, we identify four distinct ways that academic explanatory journalism creates potential opportunities: (1) making expert knowledge more accessible; (2) leveraging alternative funding models; (3) filling a void in civic journalism; and, (4) expanding the formats used to convey expert knowledge.

Accessible information

Remler et al. (2014) argue that both academia and journalism ‘produce too little investigation and analysis of complex problems communicated in a way that is publicly accessible’ (p. 358). Academic work is often highly complex and filled with jargon (Remler et al., 2014). Academic writing has also remained unavailable to most of the general public, locked behind expensive subscriptions to niche publications, or restricted to those with academic library access. Journalism, on the other hand, often tends toward oversimplification (Davis, 2021), sometimes to the point of ‘being dumbed down or even misrepresented’ (Duffy, 2015: 6). Reporters face significant time constraints, with daily deadlines and quick turnarounds requiring snap judgments (Remler et al., 2014), which don’t always allow the necessary time for fact-checking, leaving them to either withhold information or risk disseminating inaccurate, or even false content. Journalists and scholars alike each struggle when they stray from the norm. If the academic oversimplifies, they will have trouble getting through the peer-review process and published in respectable journals. If the journalist overcomplicates, they will have trouble getting through the editing process (Duffy, 2015). Thus, argue Remler et al. (2014: 366) neither academia nor journalism produce enough ‘publicly accessible investigation and analyses of complex but important topics’.

Academic explanatory journalism presents the opportunity to make research expertise more broadly accessible. Scholars can provide direct input and feedback that ensures content remains accurate and trustworthy, while journalists’ ability to ‘relay complex phenomena in human terms’ (Davis, 2021: 213) can help circulate the work of scholars more widely, and in a more consumable way.

Funding models

Within the context of Western democratic journalism, the decimation of traditional funding models based on advertising and subscription have resulted in ‘a rapid and dramatic fall in revenue’ (Remler et al., 2014: 359) and significant job losses (Marjoribanks et al., 2021; Walker, 2021). Many traditional journalism roles have been combined: TV reporters are often responsible for filming and cutting their own content, while most newspaper reporters are also expected to take their own photos (Anderson et al., 2015; Reese, 2022). These contractions have had a particularly heavy impact on investigative and local reporting (Abernathy, 2020; Hayes and Lawless, 2021), both of which are key in fulfilling the civic function of journalism.

In many places, academic institutions are growing (‘International Educational Attainment’, 2022), with new programs, facilities and students being continuously added to the ecosystem (The World Bank, 2020). Remler et al. (2014: 364) suggest that ‘surely some of academia’s resources could be used to produce scarce and publicly valuable journalism about complex issues’, particularly in the form of unfunded research. The time it takes to become acquainted with complex subjects is a luxury that most journalists do not have in the current ecosystem. Collaborating directly with the tenured academics, who have tenured research obligations, saves time, increases accuracy and frees up journalists to focus on mobilizing that knowledge.

Academic explanatory journalism also opens up opportunities for academic grants and funding that would be otherwise unavailable to journalists, and as a collaborative endeavorer, has the potential to tap into larger research teams with the experience needed to successfully win funding awards. For example, the Global Journalism Innovation Lab is an international, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research team responsible for launching the Canadian edition of The Conversation. Between 2018 and 2021, the project received almost $1.2 million CDN in government grants,² which helps to fund The Conversation Canada’s newsroom of 13 professional journalists.³ Similarly, each of the other editions of The Conversation partner with local and regional universities, government agencies, think tanks, and media partners, spreading out ongoing financial support and ensuring continuity of the project.

Filling a civic information void

Journalism has long been considered as essential in a functioning democracy, where citizens need access to timely and reliable information about events and issues of public concern – including the activities of governments and other powerful institutions and actors (Adam and Clark, 2006; Christians, 2009; Esser & Neuberger, 2009; McQuail, 2013; Ryfe, 2019; Schudson, 2008, 2020). Universities are also considered vital in a democratic society, given their role in advancing knowledge and educating citizens (Daniels et al., 2021; Kristinsson, 2023). As such, both journalists and academics strive to contribute to the production and sharing of information of concern to the public and are considered to produce valuable public goods that benefit society. Journalism content can also have direct influence on the decisions of policy makers (Levin, 2013: 24), meanwhile many academic granting agencies now require applicants to demonstrate their plan for making a societal impact with their work.

Capitalist logics have long played a particularly important role in the production and distribution of much journalism. Economists, however, have cautioned that the market offers a highly inadequate means of supporting some of the most vital forms of journalistic work – investigative and civic reporting – which require significant public investments of the kind governments have long made in the sphere of higher education (Cagé, 2016; Hermida et al., 2022). Remler et al. (2014) suggest universities and colleges are in a position to fill some of journalism’s growing voids, in part by leveraging academia’s resources mentioned above.

At the same time, academic research timelines can limit how quickly democratically relevant information can be shared with the public. An academic explanatory journalism hybrid approach can help. For example, by employing editors who work directly with academics and who proactively reach out when newsworthy events relevant to their work occur, The Conversation attempts to generate timely content.

Expanding digital information formats

Journalists have had to grapple with changing formats and mediums for decades (Pavlik, 2000; Zamith and Braun, 2019): from textual to audio to video, from newspapers to radio to TV, and then the convergence of all into the networked, instant, streaming, multimedia capabilities of the internet. Within academia, however, there has been one golden standard for circulating knowledge: the peer-reviewed academic journal article (Gonzalez et al., 2022). As such, academics have tended to default to written text in both their own outputs, as well as in conceptualizing journalism within their research. Even within its limited conceptualization, academic explanatory journalism has already demonstrated this tendency toward textual outputs. With the exception of a podcast produced and hosted by a journalist editor, The Conversation Canada comprises only written articles (accompanied by stock photos, and the occasional graphic), and the publication description notes that authors should ‘write on a subject on which they have proven expertise’.⁴ Website users must complete a reader’s profile, in order to comment, and as an open-access publication, the publication is free to read. In addition, the scant literature referencing academic explanatory journalism describes it as ‘content written by people affiliated with a university and notes that explanatory journalism ‘may not always be the most widely read form of journalism’ (Tworek et al., 2021: 5).

Academic explanatory journalism need not be delineated by medium or format; it can encompass any explanatory content produced as a collaborative effort between journalists and scholars. There is nothing that restricts explanatory journalism to written content. The submission guidelines for a Pulitzer Prize in the explanatory reporting category note ‘when possible, entries should take advantage of current technologies for reporting and storytelling, including data visualization, interactive graphics, and creative uses of social media’ (Pulitzer, n.d.). The launch of Vox.com, in fact, was premised on the idea that an abundance of information was not conducive to textual content. In his launch video, co-founder Ezra Klein points out that the amount of information available means consumers regularly ‘feel stupid’, a problem he says can’t be solved in print. ‘The nature of the medium, the nature of the space constraint, was we couldn’t put all the information you needed. But we don’t have that constraint on the web. We can solve that problem’ (Vox, 2014).

Academic explanatory journalism provides the opportunity for journalists with diverse technical knowledge and skills to help scholars branch out in their knowledge mobilization efforts. A radio journalist is well positioned to help develop a podcast. A data journalist has skills with data visualization. A web journalist has experience live-blogging events or pulling together digital resources that already exist. A video journalist knows how to collect and cut video. Academic explanatory journalism could allow scholars to explore various available options for disseminating their research, as well as provides them with access to the necessary technical skills.

Step 4: Identifying the potential challenges

It is important to consider not just what can go right, but also what could go wrong when two elements of a hybrid are introduced in practice. There is a concerning potential for friction or clashes when these two institutional cultures are mixed together. Consider some of the questions that could arise when academic explanatory journalism is put into practice, some of which will be immediately obvious to the journalists, others that will be equally obvious to the scholars: Where does this fit into the peer-review process? How do we fact check content? Or do we? What truths are we claiming and how are they determined? Do universal facts exist? Who is the target audience? What do we owe them? When is anonymity granted to sources? What constitutes bias or a conflict of interest, and how are they declared? How are corrections or retractions dealt with? How is editorial independence managed in the face of institutional funding? What information should be included in stories, and what should be left out. And why?

While they may share the ‘same genes of investigation and deliberation’ (Duffy, 2015: 5), it could be problematic to throw academics and journalists together, hoping to reap the benefits a hybrid approach without thinking through the challenges. There are substantial differences that guide the work in each of these fields, including varying epistemologies, underlying motivations and ethical perspectives, all of which lead to distinct professional standards and practices (Dickinson, 2018; Wake, 2015; Zelizer, 2004, 2008). As journalist-turned-scholar Davis (2021: 212) notes: ‘Both of our tribes stand to gain much from working together, but ours is rife with inscrutable rules and customs’. The same can be said for academia.

In addressing this step, we identify three potential friction points that may arise with the blending of academia and journalism: (1) differing epistemological starting points; (2) divergent ethical frameworks; and (3) varying standards of practice.

Differing epistemological starting points

Journalism scholar Zelizer opens her philosophical essay about the intersection of journalism as a practice and journalism as an object of cultural study with ‘Journalism prides itself on a respect for the facts, truth, and reality’ (Zelizer, 2004: 100). These concepts – facts, truth, reality – however, when brought to the surface, also unearth tensions in how journalists and academics approach their work, in part because of ongoing existential uncertainty that surrounds journalism (Zelizer, 2008): what is it, who does it and how? In their seminal journalism primer, The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel (2021: 51) note that journalists must work with ‘a practical or functional form of truth’, that can be used to operate on a day-to-day basis, even as the world is edging increasingly toward relativity, subjectivity and fluidity (Deuze and Witschge, 2018; Kantola, 2016; Zelizer, 2004). Meanwhile, the truth claims of scholarship, are typically grounded within a clearly defined and carefully constructed theoretical framework and perspective. Different academic disciplines may rely on different epistemological standpoints and may rely on different styles of argumentation to make claims, sometimes taking positivist perspectives to argue they have uncovered a knowable truth while others might take social constructivist approaches to explain various truths or no knowable truth at all (Hinchey, 2010). Regardless of standpoint, scholars are rigorously taught to problematize issues, that is, according to Wake (2015: 59), ‘to articulate an argument, to point out the contribution of the work to original knowledge, and to clearly identify the significance of what has been done together’. Journalists, on the other hand, must balance accuracy with making information interesting, accessible and relatable (Davis, 2021), and ultimately useful. Exploring the nature of knowledge in the context of daily news events is untenable; ignoring the nature of knowledge in the context of scholarship is irresponsible.

Divergent ethical frameworks

In addition to these differing understandings of truth, academia and journalism take different positions in relation to the ethical framework within which they work, determined by different understandings of their relationship with human sources of information, and the minimization of any harms that come from extracting information from them. In a commentary on the tension, Dickinson (2018) notes two competing perspectives at play: ‘The stated ethical imperatives of journalism focus on questioning power for the sake of the citizenry, while research is governed by ethics derived from the field of medicine that tends to focus on empowering the participants’. In academia, especially at institutions where the work is widely overseen by research ethics boards (REB), the starting point is to minimize harm for research participants. Journalists, on the other hand, begin from a position of reducing harm to the broader public. This is not to say that scholars aren’t driven by serving the public good, nor does it suggest journalists are not interested in minimizing harm to their individual sources. But these starting points delineate different priorities. Scholars are driven by a core principle of free, informed and ongoing consent, where they must communicate the purposes of their study and possible risks to subjects in advance, and where subjects are free to refuse to participate, or to withdraw their participation at any time (Awad, 2006). In many jurisdictions, this principle of free and informed consent for research participation is enshrined by law, such as The Common Rule in the U.S. (Protections (OHRP), 2009), as well as policies across the globe stemming from the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. By comparison, Western journalists have traditionally been driven by public interest, or the ‘public’s right to know’ (Montague, 1997; Paul and Kim, 2004), a principle within participatory societies, closely tied to press freedoms, which maintains that citizens have the right ‘to know what is going on in its government and to have relevant information about government officials’ (Cummins Gauthier, 1999: 198). Within this framework, relative harm to an individual – for example, a reporter might represent someone in a way they don’t like, or share details that might otherwise be considered private, proprietary or confidential – may be considered acceptable if it is believed to be in service of a greater public good (Awad, 2006; Dickinson, 2018). Such actions are in fact understood ‘as signs of professional integrity: they demonstrate that journalists are so committed to “the truth” that they are independent of all other interests, including the interests of the source’ (Awad, 2006: 922).

As such, where anonymity of research participants is the norm in academia, in journalism anonymity is granted to sources only as a last resort and, even then, only when certain conditions are met. Academics see confidentiality, including anonymity and using pseudonyms, not only as a way to minimize any risks of harm for research participants, but in so doing also as a way to increase accuracy and credibility of the information (Awad, 2006). In contrast, journalists see guarantees of confidentiality as ‘costly compromise in the trade-off for information’ (Awad, 2006: 933). This trade-off is complicated by legal factors: some jurisdictions have shield laws, which protect journalists from being forced to disclose an anonymous source to authorities, but many don’t, which means a journalist might be compelled to reveal a source (thus breaking a promise of confidentiality) or risk prosecution and jail time (Dupéré, 2015; Peters, 2016). Furthermore, unlike academics, journalists see anonymity as a potential risk to the accuracy and credibility of information (Carlson, 2010; SPJ, n.d.). While granting anonymity might allow whistleblowers to provide critical information more freely, it may equally allow those who are self-serving or even malicious to spread propaganda, misinformation or slander more easily and with impunity: ‘In journalism, real names are real people and hiding those names is a cause for suspicion’ (Awad, 2006: 933).

University ethics oversight highlight a further difference. Most scholars can’t even begin their research without approval from an ethics board, after having the extensive details and parameters of their proposed work reviewed, assessed, rejected, edited and reconsidered. For the researcher, this is understood as necessary protection to prevent exploitation of research subjects, and useful feedback to ensure rigorous investigation. However, seen from the perspective of the journalist, who holds fast to the principle of editorial or journalistic independence (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021), the prospect of requiring permission from a government body to conduct interviews could be interpreted as an ethical violation (Wake, 2015).

Varying standards of practice

These disparate ethical frameworks further result in differing standards of practice that determine how journalists and academics each gather and verify information, engage with sources, and present evidence. A number of practices are notable in how they are approached differently within each domain, in particular ethics approvals; source anonymity; fact-checking; transparency; and paying for information.

Journalists and academics must pass through different gateways before their work is published. While academics face external approval channels, like research ethics boards, journalists only require the internal feedback and approval of editors, who challenge and vet their work, including ethical, practical, technical and stylistic considerations all at once.

In addition to their ethical imperative of identifying sources, journalists go a step further in verifying the identities of their sources, confirming they are who they say they are. This ‘discipline of verification’ extends beyond source identity to the practices of independent corroboration and fact-checking. A basic tenet of reporting is to make attempts to corroborate information independent of the original source (e.g., asking primary sources for documentation that validate their stories, or calling secondary sources in order to confirm facts), a behind-the-scenes effort that is not typically described in the published reporting (Carlson, 2010). In The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel (2021) describe the concept of ‘prosecutorial’ or ‘skeptical’ reporting, where a reporter or editor goes through their story line by line, challenging every statement and asking what evidence exists to confirm the statements being made. By comparison, scholarship relies on the process of academic peer-review to validate research and information, which depends on other academics who are familiar with the subject matter to review and challenge research content before it is allowed to be published.

Parallel to the question of anonymity is the question of payment for sharing information. Three related practices are common in academia: incentives are meant to motivate participation in research, remuneration is meant to offset any costs involved by participating (e.g., parking or meals), and compensation is meant to offset any injuries or harms caused by the research (Tri-Council Policy Statement, 2019). In journalism, however, particularly in Western democratic contexts, payment for information, whether monetary or gifts, is generally considered unethical and seen as compromising editorial independence. Ethical codes often contain a broad blanket statement to this effect. The CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices notes that ‘To ensure we maintain our independence, we do not pay for information from a source in a story’ (CBC, n.d.), while The New York Times states that reporters ‘may not pay for interviews or unpublished documents’ (The New York Times, 2018).

Finally, the question of transparency is approached differently in the output of each domain. Academic writing is more ‘methodologically transparent’ (Duffy, 2015: 7) – that is, explicit in documenting how data was collected, stored and analyzed. While journalists do have strict codes that govern how they practice, these have traditionally been left out of their published works, unless there is a conflict of interest or something else contravenes these standards (Donsbach, 2014; Niblock, 2012). This is something that has been changing in journalism, where outlets like The New York Times now include bios alongside bylines of reporters, and links to further details about how they collected or verified data for a particular story. However, within the context of academic explanatory journalism, there exists the potential for disagreement over what information ought to be disclosed, and how to disclose it. For example, methodological details, such as where, when and how data was collected and analyzed, tend to be drawn out and dry. Where a scholar might see this as an ethically necessary disclosure, a journalist might see it as intrusive and irrelevant to the storytelling task, making the content inaccessible to a broader audience.

By interrogating the potential misalignments and misunderstandings that may arise when the components of a given hybrid are blended together, including epistemological, methodological, motivational, ethical and practical disagreements, it is possible to better anticipate problematic outcomes and ideally develop pre-emptive solutions.

Step 5: Outlining proactive solutions

All of the information aggregated throughout the previous four steps is meant to place the observer in a better position to consider which challenges need to be addressed and what options exist in order to develop pre-emptive responses. Consider this example from The Conversation’s academic explanatory journalism approach: During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Conversation published 41 stories linking to pre-print academic articles, but did so with inconsistent labeling (Fleerackers et al., 2022c). While academic audiences might be familiar with the concept of pre-print articles, they can be difficult for journalists to navigate since they aren’t able to independently verify the research (Fleerackers et al., 2022a). Moreover, non-academic readers may not be familiar with the concept of pre-print articles. In addition to finding fewer than half of the stories indicated the research being shared had not yet been through the peer-review process, (Fleerackers et al., 2022c), the authors also found that social media sharing of these stories acted as an amplifier for the unverified research (Fleerackers et al., 2022b). Had the collaborating scholars and journalists at The Conversation worked through the steps we have outlined in this paper, they might have been able to identify this potential problem ahead of time and plan accordingly. They could have outlined the circumstances under which they would publish stories based on pre-print articles, when they may choose to link (or not to link) to these articles, how to identify and label them, how to explain to readers what these labels indicate, and what to do if pre-print articles were rejected or retracted. Without clear parameters, there exists the possibility that the credibility of the scholars, the editors, and The Conversation itself could be compromised and undermine the potential opportunities of the academic explanatory journalism model.

It is important to understand then, that this five-step framework is not meant to produce generalized answers that apply to all situations. Rather, returning to Hallin et al.’s (2021) imperative, the aim is ‘to theorize particular forms of hybridity in detail’ in order to generate particular solutions for particular instances of a hybridized situation. In the case of academic explanatory journalism, for example, there may be no universally accepted answers to questions like: When should anonymity be granted to sources? Should only peer-reviewed content be published? How should corrections or retractions be managed? Each occasion of an academic explanatory journalism approach will be different; this is in part what makes it a hybrid. One project might decide to apply traditional journalism ethics, another might apply traditional research ethics, and yet another might choose elements from each and create a customized set of ethical guidelines to be applied in its particular context. The point is that exploring and understanding the particular nuances of a specific hybrid ahead of time – including its core elements, context, potential opportunities and possible challenges – is necessary to propose proactive solutions that fit the particular situation. This is both practically useful and theoretically relevant, as it helps to better identify, conceptualize and operationalize key variables and relationships worth investigating.

Conclusion

In looking at the specific case of academic explanatory journalism, we moved through five steps to better understand the implications of hybridizing academic and journalistic practices within a Western democratic context. First, we broke academic explanatory journalism down to its constituent elements of academic journalism, explanatory journalism, and the institutions of academia and journalism. We then explored the context in which these various components are being brought together, including the impacts of digitization, the changing business models of journalism, and an increased demand on scholars for knowledge mobilization efforts. In the third step, we summarized four potential opportunities to be found within academic explanatory journalism: making expert knowledge accessible; leveraging alternative funding models that can supplement journalism; filling a void in civic journalism; and, expanding the use of different digital formats and mediums. We then contrasted these theoretical opportunities presented by academic explanatory journalism with practical challenges that might result from blending these two practices and institutional cultures. Despite shared ‘genes’ and a number of commonalities, academia and journalism take differing epistemological positions when it comes to concepts like facts, truth and reality, and work from divergent ethical frameworks that pit the protection of individuals against the protection of the public good. These lead to differing standards of practice, in particular when it comes to ethics approvals, source anonymity, fact-checking, transparency, and payment for information. Once these possible challenges are identified, the fifth and final step is to consider potential solutions, planned responses or other mitigating actions to decrease their potential impacts, and to do so within the specific context of a particular hybrid. We are not offering a generalized model of academic explanatory journalism; each situation will require its own proprietary solutions developed by the scholars and journalists involved within their own institutional backgrounds, and cultural contexts.

Having worked through these steps, future research might usefully empirically study the model of academic explanatory journalism we’ve described. This could include looking at what challenges are the most prevalent and whether there are additional friction points that we haven’t identified, as well as how these issues have been addressed in practice. Another area to explore is how academics and journalists interact within non-Western contexts or within different political frameworks. And lastly, it would be useful to test this framework outside of the concept of academic explanatory journalism, by applying it to other hybrids across various disciplines, institutions, models, approaches or formats.

There is some hope that academic explanatory journalism has the potential to not only fill critical gaps in the media landscape, but also contribute to the development of alternative practices and forms of journalism that might better serve the needs of contemporary societies (Hermida and Young, 2019). However, alongside opportunities for reimagining what both journalism and universities could, or should, be in the 21st century, such hybridized solutions can present significant challenges. By contrasting the institutional cultures of scholarship and journalism and providing tangible examples of the challenges that can arise when these two domains are blended, we show how the potential of a hybrid is compromised if the core character of its constituent elements aren’t well understood.

While we apply this framework to the particularities of academic explanatory journalism, the intention is that it might be applied to the operationalization of other entirely different hybrid situations. This framework provides a preliminary roadmap for exploring and understanding in advance the frictions that might arise when any hybrid moves from theory into practice, rather than waiting to discover what ‘unusual things’ (Chadwick, 2013) occur.

Footnotes

Author’s note

Isabel Macdonald was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Ottawa at the time of writing.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (895-2019-1010).

ORCID iDs

Michelle Bartleman

Elizabeth Dubois

Notes

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A framework for examining hybridity: The case of academic explanatory journalism

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The case of academic explanatory journalism

Hybridity operationalized

Five steps for evaluating hybrid approaches

Step 1: Breaking down the core elements

Step 2: Examining the context

Step 3: Identifying potential opportunities

Accessible information

Funding models

Filling a civic information void

Expanding digital information formats

Step 4: Identifying the potential challenges

Differing epistemological starting points

Divergent ethical frameworks

Varying standards of practice

Step 5: Outlining proactive solutions

Conclusion

Footnotes

Author’s note

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Notes

References