The Journalism Studies Interest Group of the International Communication Association is concerned with journalism theory, journalism research, and professional education in journalism. The Interest Group invites a wide array of theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches, all of which are united around an interest in journalism and share the aim of enhancing existing understandings of how journalism works, across temporal and geographic contexts. Central to the mission of the interest group is to explicate what we recognize intuitively but has become increasingly vague within both the academy and the profession: What is news? Who are the people responsible for making decisions about what news is, and how do their backgrounds, education, attitudes, and beliefs influence these decisions?

The Interest Group is intended to facilitate empirical research and to bring more coherence to research paradigms, and in so doing, to further support the professionalization of journalism studies and journalism education. With journalism as its focus, the Interest Group will create a setting in which scholars employing different kinds of academic approaches can engage in dialogue. It is a clearinghouse for the wide range of scholarship on journalism.