Aims and Scope

Javnost—The Public, Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture (EURICOM) 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 blind.

Authors can choose to publish gold open access in this journal.

Read the Instructions for Authors for information on how to submit your article.