Journalistic Role Performance Project Meets at ICA 2026 in Cape Town

The Journalistic Role Performance Project (JRP) held two major activities during the 2026 International Communication Association Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, bringing together scholars from different regions of the world to discuss the present and future of comparative research on journalism.

On June 3, the project organized the preconference “Journalistic Roles in Context: Global Views and Local Realities,” a full-day event dedicated to examining how journalistic roles are performed, transformed, and understood across different media systems, platforms, and sociopolitical contexts. The preconference offered an opportunity for JRP members and scholars interested in journalism studies to share ongoing research, discuss theoretical and methodological challenges, and reflect on the contribution of the role performance approach to comparative journalism research.

The event also created a space to examine how journalism is changing in increasingly complex media environments, including the growing importance of platforms, audience expectations, artificial intelligence, misinformation, and changing professional routines. Participants discussed both global patterns and local specificities, emphasizing the need to continue studying journalistic roles as observable, situated, and contextually embedded practices.

One day later, on June 4, the JRP project held its in-person general meeting at ICA. The meeting brought together project members attending the conference to review the progress of the current wave of data collection, discuss coordination across countries, and define the next steps for the project.

Both events reaffirmed the collaborative and international character of the JRP project, which has become one of the largest comparative research initiatives in journalism studies.

The JRP team thanks all colleagues who participated in the preconference and the general meeting, and looks forward to continuing this collective work in the next stages of the project.