Fusion cuisine: A functional approach to interdisciplinary cooking in journalism studies

Journalism studies as an academic field is characterized by multidisciplinarity. Focusing on one object of study, journalism and the news, it established itself by integrating and synthesizing approaches from established disciplines – a tendency that lives on today. This constant gaze to the outside for conceptual inspiration and methodological tools lends itself to a journalism studies that is a fusion cuisine of media, communication, and related scholarship. However, what happens when this object becomes as fragmented and multifaceted as the ways we study it? This essay addresses the challenge of multiplicity in journalism studies by introducing an audience-centred, functional approach to scholarship. We argue this approach encourages the creative intellectual advancements afforded by interdisciplinary experimental cooking while respecting the classical intellectual questions that helped define the culinary tradition of journalism studies in the first place. In so doing, we offer a recipe for journalism studies fusion cooking that: (1) considers technological change (audiences’ diets), (2) analyses institutional change (audiences’ supermarket of information), and (3) evaluates journalism’s societal and democratic impact (audiences’ cuisines and health).