If you follow Media Studies on a more regular basis, you may have noticed some changes in the journal in 2018. Some of these are visible more (a redesigned web presentation, switch from the printed and online publication to online only), some of them less (an explicitly expressed relationship to the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University as the journal’s publisher in the journal’s web domain and email addresses, or modified aims and scope of the journal). As these changes are a reflection of longer-term internal debates about the direction and function of the journal, let me briefly sum them up and clarify.
The first motivation for the journal’s existence was to ensure a unified and generally respected communication platform for critical discussion of media contents and the practices of media producers and recipients. Implicitly, the journal was oriented mainly to the Czech and Slovak professional community. The endeavour to critically scrutinize the media is no less important than in 2006, when the journal was founded. Nonetheless, having a national scientific journal no longer seems to correspond with the current state of media research, or with the redefined demands for scientific publishing. The boundaries of the Czech and Slovak media research space are more porous than the original strategy assumed, whether we view it with respect to commonly used theoretical frameworks, methodological procedures or links between authors and research recipients. At the same time, Czech and Slovak scientists are more than ever asked to contribute primarily into journals with impact factors or those at least indexed in the Scopus and/or Web of Science databases.
For these reasons, we emphasize the importance of English-written texts. We believe that Czech and Slovak, but more broadly central and eastern European media research is not just regional. As with the research practice above, the boundaries of national media fields are not fixed and impervious. Consequently, the global media, social, cultural, economic, or political trends are specifically re-contextualized, rather than simply copied. Therefore, the research of central and eastern European media is not irrelevant to the understanding of global phenomena. In order for such argumentation to be not only a conceivable mantra of Central and Eastern European media scientists, it is necessary to prove it convincingly beyond their language communities, i.e. to write in English. As at the same time, every language is exceptional in terms of the cognitive reflection of social reality, we do not wish to eliminate Czech and Slovak from the field of professional communication. But keeping them isolated seems not to be the best way of preserving precisely those language qualities.
In short, we will do our best to make Media Studies a quality, recognizable and prestigious journal. We will emphasize more thoroughly its bilingual nature and also will endeavour to get Media Studies indexed in the Scopus database. Let’s hope that these goals are not overly ambitious and will correspond to the expectations of the journal’s authors and readers.
Katerina Kirkosova
Editor-in-chief
27 Jul 2023
