Convergent Models of Journalism and Visual Advocacy in Contexts of Democratic Regression
Convergent Models of Journalism and Visual Advocacy in Contexts of Democratic Regression

Author(s): Iva Ivanova
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Media studies, Communication studies
Published by: Факултет по журналистика и масова комуникация, Софийски университет „Св. Кл. Охридски”
Keywords: convergent journalism; visual advocacy; democratic regression; civil society; media monitoring; Bulgaria; framing; design-for-trust; civic communication
Summary/Abstract: This article examines how convergent models of journalism intersect with visual advocacy in contexts of democratic regression. It argues that, under conditions of polarization, shrinking civic space, and legislative pressure against rights-based actors, journalism and advocacy no longer function as separate communicative fields. Instead, they form a hybrid public ecology in which civil society organizations act simultaneously as sources, watchdogs, visual narrators, and agenda-setters, while journalistic formats increasingly absorb advocacy frames, platform aesthetics, and interpretive cues. The article combines theoretical discussion with an empirical reading of a 2024 media-monitoring dataset on the coverage of members of the Citizen Participation Fo rum in Bulgaria. The corpus contains 1,484 media publications about 44 regular member organizations between January and December 2024. The findings show a strong concentration of visibility around a small group of watchdog, children‘s rights, youth and public integrity organizations: the six most visible actors account for 77.6% of all publications, while Sofia-based organizations account for 80.1% of the monitored coverage. At the same time, regionally embedded organizations appear through more practical, community-oriented frames, suggesting that proximity can buffer civil society from ideological stigmatization. The article develops the concept of visual advocacy as a design-for-trust practice that combines affective appeals, legal references, institutional markers, and platform-native formats. It concludes that in fragile democracies, convergent journalism can either amplify stigmatizing narratives or help sustain democratic resilience by making civic work visible, verifiable, and narratively legible.

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