About this journal

Javnost—The Public, Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture was established in 1994 as a platform for social scientists all over the world to address, promote, share, and discuss problems, issues and developments of publicness on international and interdisciplinary levels, to stimulate the development of theory and research in the field, and to help understand and bridge the differences between cultures.

Javnost—The Public publishes original research papers on all aspects of publicness with strong theoretical foundations. The research presented must transcend the limits of single case studies. Nevertheless, both empirical and theoretical studies are accepted if they offer insights into issues related to the public sphere theories and debates, such as:

• the role of (media) communication in fostering human freedom and social change;
• public service broadcasting;
• media democratization in East-Central Europe, South-East Asia and China;
• digitization of broadcasting; new developments in journalism;
• the importance of communication for class relationships;
• public opinion and political representation;
• perspectives of small-scale media and community media;
• tabloidization of the media;
• globalization of media and media policies;
• popular culture as political communication; media (in) war and peace;
• democratic rhetoric and duty of liberation;
• transformations in the public sphere(s) and the development of a European public sphere;
• E-networks and democratic life;
• “forgotten” communication scholars, and many others.

Although the primary objective of the journal is to contribute to intellectual understanding of transformations in the democratic process, it is also meant to contribute to improved political practice, policy, and action.

Euricom’s quarterly is named after the Slovene noun “ javnost,” which has the same complex meaning(s) as the German concept, Öffentlichkeit (the Slovene language is one of not very many languages that have a perfect conceptual equivalent to the German term Öffentlichkeit). Due to the multi-dimensionality of the concept “javnost,” its comprehensive and all-embracing translation into English and many other languages is not possible. The conceptual capacity of the traditional English term, “the public”, the English co-title of the journal, is one of its meanings in English, much narrower than its German/Slovene counterpart Öffentlichkeit/javnost, which is deliberately used against its currently much more popular rival, “the public sphere”. By using the term “the public,” we want to emphasize fundamental ontological differences between “the public” and “the public sphere” as two distinct entities and concepts, and oppose the widespread conceptual substitution of “the public” by “the public sphere,” which may – paradoxically – even imply the disappearance of the body public through a discursive process, i.e. the existence of “the public sphere” without “the public.”

Javnost—The Public is a peer-reviewed journal and all peer review is double anonymized.

EDITOR

Slavko Splichal, EURICOM

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Boris Mance, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

EDITORIAL BOARD

Muhammad Ayish, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Maria Bakardjieva, University of Calgary, Canada

Aukse Balcytiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania

Shakuntala Banaji, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK 

Carlos Barrera, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

Mine Gencel Bek, Universität Siegen, Germany

Klaus Bruhn Jensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Andrew Calabrese, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK 

Nico Carpentier, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Maximilian Conrad, University of Iceland, Iceland

Benjamin De Cleen, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Lincoln Dahlberg, Independent Scholar, Auckland, New Zealand

Peter Dahlgren, University of Lund, Sweden

Benjamin De Cleen, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Charles Ess, University of Oslo, Norway

Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Christian Fuchs, Paderborn University, Germany

Jostein Gripsrud, University of Bergen, Norway

Tatsuro Hanada, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

Maria Heller, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Joke Hermes, Inholland University, The Netherlands 

Petros Iosifidis, City University London, UK

Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, USA

Nicholas Jankowski, University of Nijmegen, Netherlands

Laurence Kaufmann, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Anne Kaun, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

Risto Kunelius, University of Helsinki, Finland

Chin-Chuan Lee, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Joseph Man Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 

Ed McLuskie, Boise State University, USA

Paolo Mancini, University of Perugia, Italy

Tristan Mattelart, University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas, France 

Vincent Mosco, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

Hannu Nieminen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Zrinjka Peruško, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Barbara Pfetsch, Free University of Berlin, Germany

Horst Poettker, University of Dortmund, Germany

Paschal Preston, Dublin City University, Republic of Ireland

Regina Queiroz, Lusófona University / NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal

Philippe Joseph Salazar, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Eugenia Siapera, University College Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Colin Sparks, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Hans-Jörg Trenz, Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze, Italy

Ksenija Vidmar Horvat, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Janet Wasko, University of Oregon at Eugene, USA

Hartmut Wessler, University of Mannheim, Germany