A Codebook for Uptake of Explanatory Journalism

Project Lead

Dr. Catherine Schryer

Emerging Researcher(s)

Daryn Tyndale, Sam Shaftoe

This project analyzes explanatory journalism as an emerging genre. Drawing on a wide range of communication disciplines, including classical rhetorical studies, journalism studies, genre theory, and theories of knowledge translation, Dr. Schryer’s team is working to identify the essential features and strategies that characterize explanatory journalism as it is being practiced on The Conversation and develop a better understanding of how explanation functions in journalistic writing. 

Dr. Schryer’s team is creating a codebook designed to assess trends in the use of particular linguistic, rhetorical, and stylistic strategies across The Conversation. Using both human coders and automated text analysis, this project will conduct a quantitative content analysis on a large corpus of English-language The Conversation articles. This analysis will examine various features of The Conversation articles, including verb tense and the management of time, what rhetorical strategies are used to advance explanation, and how The Conversation blends conventions of academia and journalism.  

The project also explores notions of expertise and references. The Conversation articles are written by university professors, researchers, and graduate students, who draw on their own expertise in their field to support and contextualize their claims. Author bios and self disclosure within articles themselves may affect perceived credibility. The Conversation also lets authors hyperlink words and phrases within their articles, allowing authors to direct readers to additional resources on a particular topic. Further investigation aims to understand how referencing within The Conversation functions: how do these references contribute to the author’s explanatory aims? Are certain sources of evidence more salient than others? 

The concept of explanatory journalism, though increasingly popular, remains ill-defined in the existing literature on journalism and explanatory writing. The Conversation in particular has developed a distinct mode of journalism that blends traditional journalistic writing with academic research. This study will move existing scholarship forward by identifying the essential features of explanatory journalism, how it is currently being practiced on The Conversation, and what constitutes effective explanation.