Sociology Compass 9/6 (2015): 427–437, 10.1111/soc4.12267 Contemporary NGO–Journalist Relations: Reviewing and Evaluating an Emergent Area of Research Matthew Powers * Department of Communication, University of Washington – Seattle Abstract Long recognized as key players in international politics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly assume important roles in the provision of news. By hiring photographers, staffing online departments and funding reporting trips, NGOs act in ways that overlap with the actions of professional journalists. This article reviews and evaluates an emerging area of research – the study of NGO–journalist relations – that analyzes these developments. It proceeds in four parts: First, it overviews changes in the NGO and journalism sectors that drive growing scholarly interest in the topic. Second, it summarizes the findings of the available research. Third, it suggests some of the ways in which this research connects with concerns in the sociology of media and communication. Fourth, it evaluates the findings in light of various normative frameworks of public discourse. It concludes by suggesting that NGO–journalism scholarship can benefit from further attention by sociologists working in the areas of media and communication. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have long been recognized as key players in the po- litical process (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Whether providing services, advocating to government and business officials or waging public awareness campaigns, such groups form the backbone of much contemporary civic action (Lang 2013). Research has consistently found that publicity is key in helping NGOs achieve their various goals, from raising funds to exerting pressure on political and economic elites (Benthall 1993). Therefore, one important strand of research has examined the relationship between NGOs and the journalistic field in which they interact in order to achieve these aims. In this vein, scholars have examined the strategies NGOs use to gar- ner media coverage (Fenton 2010; Waisbord 2011), investigated the permeability of the news media to such strategies (Thrall et al. 2014; Van Leuven and Joye 2014) and debated the effects of these interactions on NGOs, journalism and public discourse more generally (Cottle and Nolan 2007; Chouliaraki 2013; Orgad 2013). Today, a host of changes in both the journalism and NGO sectors drive growing scholarly interest in this emergent area of research. On the one hand, news organizations face dwindling profits, technological upheavals and shrinking audiences that raise questions about the capacity of journalists to produce original reporting in an unending news cycle (Schudson 2011). On the other hand, NGOs – as a result of growing institutionalization, professionalization and compe- tition in their own sector – are expanding the amount and types of information they produce (Powers 2015a). These twin developments raise a number of questions with implications for so- ciologists interested in media and communication. For example, will the diminished resources of news organizations give publicity-seeking NGOs greater prominence in the news? Of equal importance, will digital technologies allow NGOs to bypass the news media and become their own news provider? To date, these questions have been addressed primarily by a small but growing number of researchers in the fields of communication and media studies (see, e.g.Powers 2014, 2015a, 2015b; Conrad 2015; Cottle and Nolan 2007; Dogra 2014; Fenton 2010; McPherson 2015; © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.