Media Theory Conference

• About the Journal

Media Theory is an independent, online and open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical interventions into all aspects of media and communications. Resolutely international and interdisciplinary in scope, the editors encourage submissions that critically engage with the theoretical frameworks and concepts that tend to be taken for granted in national or disciplinary perspectives.

Although the journal privileges an emphasis on theory, the editors are not only concerned with theory for theory’s sake. Rather, we are interested in how theoretically-informed and -engaged interventions can contribute to the interpretation of empirical research and critique, as well as to the deprovincialization of theoretical debate – helping us understand, rather than dismiss or describe, objects of critique, and making us reconsider the validity, efficacy and legitimacy of our own particular methodological approaches.

With that in mind, we are keen to stretch the definition of ‘media’, and to receive articles that critically debate the necessity of an emphasis on ‘theory’, or which prefer to emphasise ‘theories’ or ‘philosophy’ instead. As an open access journal, we would also like to provide a forum for debates on open access, peer-review and the future of academic publishing.
 

• Publisher & Partners

Media Theory is owned by the Media Theory Association, a nonprofit organization registered in France. It is published in Canada by Trent University Library & Archives. The Association is made up of the members of the editorial board of the Journal (currently 37 members). Members meet at least once a year in a General Assembly for the Association and Editorial Board meeting for the Journal. The Association elects the Council from among its members. The Council is made up of the two editors-in-chief of the Journal, who also perform the roles of president, secretary and treasurer of the Association, and who are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Journal. Currently, Joshua Synenko (Trent University, Canada) is treasurer of the Association, and Simon Dawes (UVSQ-Paris Saclay, France) is secretary and president of the Association.
 

• About the Conference

“Media theory seems eclipsed by the ubiquity of its objects” (Rossiter, 2017). This observation from the inaugural issue of our journal is no less relevant today. While Ned Rossiter’s focus was on the prevalence of fake news and on paranoia as a methodological tool, the installation of media forms in all aspects of life continues to present acute practical, cultural, affective, and epistemological challenges—perhaps more than ever. Automation, algorithmic governance, and ecological crises together with accelerationist billionaires and the declining influence of activist networks are all intensified by the unraveling of geopolitical order and resurgence of fascism worldwide. This reality presents significant risks and yet has become a commonplace feature of our daily existence.

The Media Theory journal was launched in 2017 to address these mounting challenges by way of deprovincializing the field of inquiry: to disentangle media theory from a predictable constellation of industries, disciplines, traditions, and regions, and equally to question what it means to theorize in a context where, as M. Beatrice Fazi (2017) writes, “high-speed computational operations are now driving both invention and discovery.” In addressing these critical needs, the journal was inspired by a further, and admittedly more speculative aim to move academic publishing towards radical alternatives and experimentation, to push the boundaries of what a journal can be, and ultimately, “to develop a transnational and transdisciplinary forum of debate on media theory and academic publishing” (Dawes, 2017).


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