“…Existing work has looked at the transformation of the journalism–whistleblowing relationship in the age of digitalization, for example through the formation of new actors such as WikiLeaks (Bosua et al, 2014; Brevini, 2017; Chadwick, 2017; Di Salvo, 2021; Porlezza and Di Salvo, 2020), global journalistic collaboration around major whistleblower disclosures such as the Panama Papers (Carson and Farhall, 2018), journalistic meta-coverage in the wake of the Snowden disclosures (Eide and Kunelius, 2018), constructions of the whistleblower in newspaper coverage (Di Salvo and Negro, 2016; Wahl-Jorgensen and Hunt, 2012), and journalists’ considerations on ethics and sources in relation to whistleblowers (Liebes and Blum-Kulka, 2004; Waters, 2020). 1 It is quite striking that with the exception of Liebes and Blum-Kulka (2004), Wahl-Jorgensen and Hunt (2012), and Waters (2020), this research is strongly focused around themes of digitalization and complexity that have acquired prominence since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA in 2013. While this emphasis is both important and warranted by recent empirical developments, we still lack a systematic conceptual and theoretical foundation from which to understand the journalism–whistleblowing relationship at a more general level.…”