CfP: /Media & Journalism/ special issue on “Audiences and Intersectionalities”.

Deadline (full articles): September 15, 2025.

Thematic editors:
Juan José Sánchez Soriano (Universidad de Murcia, España),
Rafael Ventura (Universitat de Lleida, España)
Isabel Villegas Simón (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, España)

The research topic of this call for papers primarily focuses on studies of audience reception across various intersectionalities, including LGBTIQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, older adults, racialized communities, people with diverse body types, and women. The objective is to analyze how these social groups interpret and engage with their representation in various media formats (TV news, press, reality shows, TV series, feature films, social media, content creation platforms, etc.). Additionally, it is valuable to examine how general audiences perceive media discourses surrounding these intersectionalities. In this way, the goal is to explore both the mirror effect and the window effect within the audience.
On the one hand, we define audiences in a broad sense, encompassing all individuals who engage with and interact with media content reflective of their time (Ha, 2020). Moreover, we propose viewing audiences not merely as passive consumers of cultural and media content, but as active agents with a crucial role in interpreting these messages (Livingstone, 2015). Therefore, it is essential to understand and explore how these audiences relate to and engage with such content, as evidenced by recent studies, such as those examining the interpretations of trans individuals regarding their representation in television series (Villegas-Simón et al., 2024).
On the other hand, like the society in which it exists, the audience is diverse and heterogeneous (Kristensen & From, 2015). Thus, we are in a context where, historically, the representation of minority social groups has been underrepresented or often constructed through stigma and negative stereotypes (Sánchez-Soriano, 2023), as is the case with people with disabilities (Page et al., 2024) or individuals with diverse body types (Collins et al., 2024). As a result, numerous studies have focused on discourse analysis of both traditional and emerging representations (Ventura et al., 2024). However, we believe it is essential to shift the focus to the final stage of the entire media cycle: how audiences interact with these representations, examining how they engage with and respond to such content.
At the same time, social media has allowed the emergence of new content and representations that generate seemingly more diverse discourses, but which also compete with the spread of hate speech (Miranda et al., 2024). For this reason, it is valuable to develop new research that, within the framework of intersectionality, focuses on analyzing the reception of content from any media and format, including the press, radio, and cinema, as well as social media and content creation platforms like SVODs, while focusing on the current cultural and media context. 


Topics:
* Methodologies focused on audiences and their interactions with cultural and media content. Reflections and ethics surrounding their application;
* Minority audiences and their media and cultural consumption, including women, LGBTIQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, older adults, racialized communities, and individuals with diverse body types;
* Perceptions, interactions, and responses of general audiences to content addressing diversity and intersectionality;
* Media literacy and intersectionality. Formal and informal learning about diversity and intersectionality through the media;
Fandom and intersectionality;
* Youth, intersectionality, and cultural and media consumption;
* Digital audiences and intersectionality. Interaction, consumption, and responses to content generated on digital platforms;
* Meta-research focused on academic production about audiences and intersectionalities.

_Important Dates_
Deadline for submitting articles: September 15, 2025

Editors' decision: January 2026
Expected publication date: April 2026

Media & Journalism e-journal, ISSN 1645 5681, is a NOVA Institute of Communication publication of the NOVA University of Lisbon, published by Coimbra University Press, and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The journal has a rigorous scientific arbitration system and is published twice a year. It is indexed in different platforms and databases of scientific journals, both nationally and internationally, like WoS, SCOPUS, EBSCO – Academic Search Premier, DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals, Elektronischen Zeitschriftenbibliothek, SciELO. Since 2024 it has been published continuously (online-first).
Each paper is sent to two reviewers, who are invited in advance to evaluate it based on the criteria of quality, originality, and relevance in line with the aim and theme of the specific issue of the journal.
Articles can be submitted in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s website (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/mj). Once accessing RMJ for the first time, registration is required to submit the article and track the editorial process. We recommend reviewing the Author Guidelines, Submission Conditions, and the journal's Editorial Policy.

All of the journal’s content is available to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 International license. It adheres to the ethical principles of publication based on the Code of Conduct and Standards of Good Practice for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics - COPE (http://publicationethics.org/).


The authors do not need to pay any article-processing charge (APC)

If you have questions, please contact the assistant editorial: Patrícia Contreiras (pariciacontreiras /at/ fcsh.unl.pt) (malito:(patriciacontreiras / at / fcsh.unl.pt)