Audio/Visual Essays

A/V section start up

The first A/V section of Mediální studia / Media Studies will be included in the first issue of 2027, with the Call for Papers for A/V essays published in July 2026. In the first phase, the A/V section will be published annually. After evaluation, the frequency of the A/V section can be increased if there is (evidence of) more demand.

A/V section’s scope

The A/V section of Mediální studia / Media Studies will publish peer-reviewed academic A/V essays. The genre of the academic A/V essay refers to formal and structured pieces of work with a clear narrative that creatively deploy audio/visual modes of communication. Subgenres include audiovisual essays, film essays, video essays, and sound essays.

The focus on academic work implies that the contributions themselves need to contain the characteristics of academic publications, for instance, in their vocabulary, in their attention to theory and methodology, and in the rigorous and systematic nature of their analysis. At the same time, the A/V section will welcome contributions with hybrid affiliations to different fields, for instance, by articulating artistic and academic approaches, including A/V work that integrates elements from literature, theatre, and dance. The A/V section also strongly prefers contributions that creatively deploy the use of the audio/visual mode (avoiding A/V work with only academic lecturing). Finally, A/V essays can be in any language, but when languages other than English are used, English-friendly measures are required.

The A/V section has no thematic a prioris, as the usage of the audio/visual mode of communication renders it relevant. At the same time, A/V work that deals with communication-related themes is particularly welcome.

The target audience of the A/V section thus remains an academically informed audience, which implies that the A/V section will not publish contributions which are primarily aimed at reaching (larger) audiences outside academia, as part of a science communication strategy.

Publication format

Each published academic A/V work in the A/V section will have three components: (1) the A/V work itself, (2) a contextualizing statement and (3) an abstract and keywords.

1. The A/V work itself, with a preferred duration between 5 and 30 minutes, in one of the file formats that will be specified later. There will be a maximum file size of 6 Gigabyte.
2. The contextualizing statement, which is a written academic text, and which includes a list of references, with the journal’s APA reference style. The statement has a preferred length of 2000 words (with the reference list not included in the word count).
3. The A/V work’s abstract and keywords, with a preferred length of 150 words for the abstract, and 6 to 8 keywords.

For the online version of the A/V section, all three components will be uploaded to a CUNI server, allowing for their archiving in collaboration with the CUNI library.

For the printed version, the A/V works’ metadata, the A/V work’s abstract and keywords, and the contextualizing statement will be included, together with a QR code to the (online) A/V work. A/V works will again be included in a separate section of the journal issue.

Collaborations

The A/V Section of the Media Studies Journal is a publication in collaboration with the Multimodal Communication Research (MCR) of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).