Submit a manuscript

Media Theory publishes guest-edited special issues on particular themes as well as standard issues of unrelated articles. All journal content, including article submissions, special issue proposals, and commissioned material is peer-reviewed to ensure original, high-quality contributions. 

We are particularly keen to receive submissions from authors from the global south, and work informed by feminist theory, queer theory, or critical race theory. We welcome submissions both from established and emerging scholars. 

If an article is submitted in response to a call for papers for a specific special issue, it will be received and dealt with by the guest editor(s) in liaison with the journal editor, and should be emailed directly to the guest editor(s). All other unsolicited submissions are received by, dealt with, and should be emailed directly to, the journal editors.

All submissions to Media Theory are double-blind peer-reviewed (meaning that the identity of both authors and reviewers are known only to the editors), so contributors should take care to remove any obvious indications of authorship; when citing your own work, replace your name with ‘Author’ in both the body of the text and in the references. In the references, you should also remove all other identifying features such as title, journal, year etc, so each self-citation should appear simply as “Author, a; Author, b…”etc. Details on our peer-review process can be found below. 

Structure of submissions 

Articles should contain an abstract (approx. 150 words), keywords (approx. 5), and (in the final, accepted version) a short biographical note and email address for each author (approx. 1-5 lines per author). Article submissions should be in Word (.docx) format. 

Articles should generally contain between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including all notes and references), though we are reasonably flexible.

Images: If images are to be included, please ensure:

  1. That there are no copyright issues that are not covered by ‘fair use’.
  2. Supply the copyright owner’s name and a brief caption.
  3. Image resolution should be 300dpi.

Special issue proposals

Proposals should also be sent to the journal editors. They should contain a brief outline of the aims and scope of the issue, clearly situating the project within the relevant literature and emphasising the relevance to the aims and scope of the journal, as well as names and short biographies of the editors and at least some of the proposed contributors, and draft titles and abstracts for their articles. Issues based on conferences or other events are encouraged, but we tend to prefer a mix of solicited articles and those submitted in response to a call for papers. Special issues should be international and interdisciplinary, and contain contributions from authors from multiple institutions and from a diverse range of perspectives.

All proposals are considered by the editorial board in its entirety and occasionally by some members of the advisory board (see Editorial Team). The editors-in-chief will respond with a decision and informal feedback from board members within 2 weeks. Successful proposals will be guest edited by the issue editors, who will have full control over the peer-review process and editing of the issue (in liaison with the journal editors if necessary).

Referencing 

The journal uses the Harvard referencing system (NB Until 2025, a variation on this style was used; from 2026 onwards we use the classic Harvard style). All submissions should be in this format. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that this referencing style is used. Embedded quotations should be in double quote marks. Ellipses added by article author to a quotation should be in square brackets: […]. In-text citations should be in this format: (Stiegler, 1998: 54). For an example of how to present the list of references, see below or browse our previously published articles:

Books:

  • Derrida, J. (1976) Of Grammatology. Translated by G.C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • McLuhan, M. (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
  • Papacharissi, Z. (2014) Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Parks, L. and Kaplan, C. (eds.) (2017) Life in the Age of Drone Warfare. London and Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Stiegler, B. (1998) Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Translated by R. Beardsworth and G. Collins. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Williams, R. (1974) Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Routledge.

Book chapters:

  • Hall, S. (1977) ‘Culture, Media, and the “Ideological Effect”’, in Curran, J., Gurevitch, M. and Woollacott, J. (eds.) Mass Communication and Society. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 315–348.
  • Hall, S. (1986) ‘Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms’, in Collins, R., Curran, J., Garnham, N., Scannell, P., Schlesinger, P. and Sparks, C. (eds.) Media, Culture and Society: A Critical Reader. London: Sage, pp. 33–48.
  • Hall, S. (1996) ‘The Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without Guarantees’, in Morley, D. and Chen, K. (eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 25–46.

Journal articles:

  • Kittler, F. (2009) ‘Towards an Ontology of Media’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26(2–3), pp. 23–31.
  • Morley, D. (2009) ‘For a Materialist, Non–Media-Centric Media Studies’, Television & New Media, 10(1), pp. 114–116.

Online newspaper article:

Blog post:

Peer review process and timeline 

Articles: All article submissions are subject to double-anonymous peer-review. Once an article is received, the editors assign at least two external peer-reviewers whose research interests correspond to those covered in the article. Some members of the journal’s editorial board will also be asked to comment on the article. Referees and board members are asked to send their comments to the editors within 3-4 weeks. Once all comments have been received, the editors decide, sometimes in liaison with additional members of the board, before contacting authors with the decision and feedback. This refereeing process normally takes 2-3 months.

Editorial decision categories are as follows:

ACCEPT: The article is accepted in its current form and authors will be asked to provide a final version before copyediting begins.

ACCEPT WITH MINOR REVISIONS: The article is accepted subject to satisfactory completion of specified and minor changes. The subsequent revised version will not need to be resent for peer-review.

REVISE: The article cannot yet be accepted, until the required revisions have been made. The subsequent revised version of the article will be sent back to the original set of peer-reviewers for further feedback before an editorial decision can be made.

REJECT: The article is rejected and there will be no further consideration of the article.

Special issue proposals: The journal encourages a collaborative process of assessment. Special issue proposals are considered by the editorial board in its entirety (and occasionally by some members of the advisory board). The editors-in-chief then respond with a decision and informal feedback from board members within two weeks. Successful proposals are guest edited by the issue editors, who have full control over the peer-review process and editing of the issue (in liaison with the journal editors if necessary).

Guest editors of special issues conduct double-anonymous peer-review of all articles, normally with 3 reviews for each article, made up of a mixture of board members and (at least 2) external specialists. These are based upon the reviewers’ expertise on subjects covered in the article. Reviewers are asked to return their recommendation and feedback, with confidential notes to the editors if desired (detailing potential conflicts of interest, for instance), within 3-4 weeks.

Commissioned material: Commentaries and interviews in the journal, and reviews on the blog, are editorially reviewed.

Copyright

Copyright of all articles published in the journal rests with the authors of each particular article. The authors grant the journal a non-exclusive licence to publish the articles. Authors are free to disseminate, re-use and re-publish their articles however they wish; we merely request that authors acknowledge prior publication in Media Theory (and include the appropriate reference and url).

All articles from vo.7, no.2 (2023) are published CC-BY. Third parties are free to:

  1. Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
  2. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
  3. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions – You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Privacy 

Any names and email addresses submitted to Media Theory will be used only for the journal’s intended purposes and will not be disclosed to third parties or used for unrelated activities.