Shifting epistemologies of data journalism and the audience turn: A systematic literature review

Research on data journalism is mostly focused on the production of data-driven news by news organisations or collaborative teams. Its core questions often relate to organisational setups (Stalph, 2020), new demands for technical skills (Schaetz, Lischka &amp; Laugwitz, 2023), software and tools, or access to data (Bounegru &amp; Gray, 2021). Data journalism allows new ways of knowledge creation and storytelling (Coddington, 2015), and thus changes professional routines as well as news consumption patterns on the audience side – as public discussions of COVID-19-related data during the pandemic have shown (Bisiani et al., 2023). These shifts in the epistemology of journalism through data-based practices of investigation and analysis became more prominent in journalism studies, and increasingly consider the broader ecosystem of practitioners in data-driven knowledge creation (Morini, 2023; Ramsälv et al., 2023). However, broader calls for an ‘audience turn’ (Swart et al., 2022) in journalism research have not yet resonated in data journalism research, apart from some first interventions in this direction (Stalph, Thurman &amp; Thäsler-Kordonouri, 2023). This paper seeks to map possible directions of future research in this domain, based on a systematic literature review of data journalism research published between 2018 and 2023 in international journals. <br/><br/>Drawing from a body of over 120 articles, we created a thematic sample of 38 articles in which shifts in epistemologies of data journalism are directly or indirectly addressed. Through open and selective coding, we identify four main themes of shifts in data journalism epistemology, to answer our research question: Under which themes are shifts in the epistemology of data journalism addressed in research literature between 2018 to 2023? These four themes include I) the theory of journalistic knowledge creation, II) practices of data journalism and their relation as well as challenges for traditional professional journalistic practices, III) modalities of participation in the creation and interpretation of data journalism, and, to a lesser degree, IV) issues of perception and engagement with data journalism from an audience perspective. In our discussion, we relate these findings to a) the audiences of data journalistic products, and b) the potential of data journalism for cross-sector collaboration with other stakeholders in society. We identify a research gap on audiences’ perception of data-driven news. In addition, participation in different phases of data-driven journalism production (Appelgren &amp; Jönsson, 2021; Hamm, 2022; Palomo et al., 2019) relates data journalistic practices to other domains of professional data work such as civic tech, citizen science, or smart city developments (Author, 2023; Baack, 2018). In this broader ecosystem of practitioners, audiences of data journalism include not only citizens but other (local) actors who use journalistic data sources for their own objectives and purposes (e.g. NGO’s or municipal authorities). Our paper thus proposes that shifts in epistemologies of data journalism allow for an ‘audience turn’ in research that addresses how knowledge created through data journalism is used for, interpreted in, and transposed to policy, civil or other knowledge domains, thus realising the democratic function of journalism through new kinds of data-driven knowledge practices across sectors.