This paper concerns the reconstruction of an anisotropic conductivity tensor in an elliptic second-order equation from knowledge of the so-called power density functionals. This problem finds applications in several coupled-physics medical imaging modalities such as ultrasound modulated electrical impedance tomography and impedance-acoustic tomography. We consider the linearization of the nonlinear hybrid inverse problem. We find sufficient conditions for the linearized problem, a system of partial differential equations, to be elliptic and for the system to be injective. Such conditions are found to hold for a lesser number of measurements than those required in recently established explicit reconstruction procedures for the nonlinear problem.