The journal Recherches en Communication is calling papers for its thematic issue “Journalism and Experientiality”. The issue will explore the interplay between journalism and experience in narrative and literary forms of journalism.

This thematic issue aims to broaden our knowledge of both the strategies employed by journalists to create vicarious experience for readers within literary journalistic texts, and the way readers process and react to such texts. The differences between reading fiction and non-fiction largely remain to be explored in fields such as cognitive narratology, reader-response theory, neuroscience, psychology, ethnography and literary studies.

For this thematic issue, all submissions investigating the relationship between narrative/literary journalism and experience are welcome.

[spoiler title=’This includes, but is not limited to, papers addressing questions such as:’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]

– How does experientiality translate in works of literary journalism?
– How does the experiential dimension of these texts transform journalists’ reporting and writing practices?
– How do readers actually react to such texts?
– What is the role of empathy in narrative literary journalism?
– To what extent can literary journalism generate pro-social behavior?
– What kinds of expectations do readers bring to this genre and how are these created?
– Are there qualitative differences between the experience of reading fiction and non-fiction?
– What kinds of relationships exist between the aesthetic and the experiential in literary journalism?
– What kind of experience can multimedia, transmedia and interactive journalistic narratives create?[/spoiler]

Deadline for submission is 29 June 2018.

Read more from the full call for papers.