[Commlist] Call for papers: Criticism at Its Critical Moment: Cinema and Media Facing the Challenges Posed by the Digital Revolution

Caleidoscopio – Journal of Communication and Culture
Vol. 2, No. 1

Submission deadline: 30 January 2027
Issue editors: Júlio Alves and Luís Mendonça

Caleidoscopio – Journal of Communication and Culture, published by the 
Department of Communication Sciences at ECATI, Universidade Lusófona, 
invites submissions for an issue examining the role, practices and 
transformations of criticism in the context of the digital revolution.

Drawing on the etymological affinity between kritikos and krisis, this 
issue approaches criticism as a form of mediation between works and 
their audiences, interpretation and judgment, distance and immersion. It 
considers how criticism produces ways of seeing, thinking and engaging 
with cinema, media and the arts, and how these practices are being 
challenged and reconfigured by contemporary technological, cultural and 
economic conditions.

Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and social media pose new 
questions for critical practice. At the same time, cultures of rapid 
evaluation, self-performance and public confrontation raise questions 
about the space available for sustained analysis, historical 
contextualisation and nuance. This issue invites reflection on these 
transformations without assuming that digital change necessarily entails 
the disappearance of criticism, cinema or cinephilia.

How can criticism respond to the pressures of platforms, markets and 
algorithmic recommendation? What happens to the relationship between 
spectatorship and consumption when works are increasingly treated as 
content or products? How do practices of rating, reviewing and sharing 
reshape critical authority and the experience of cinema and other media? 
What can earlier traditions of criticism contribute to contemporary 
debates, and how might critical practices reinvent themselves under 
changing technical, social, political and economic conditions?

The issue also asks how criticism can be reconsidered as a journalistic 
and literary genre, and as an ethical, aesthetic and political practice. 
It welcomes contributions examining the relationship between 
interpretation and judgment, the role of memory and historical distance, 
and the possibilities for renewing critical engagement with works and 
audiences.

Contributions from Communication and Media Studies scholars are 
explicitly welcome, as are interdisciplinary submissions in media art, 
film studies, philosophy of cinema, philosophy of technology, semiotics, 
critical theory, media theory and visual studies.

About the journal
Founded in 2002, Caleidoscopio is an open-access journal dedicated to 
critical research in communication sciences, with a particular focus on 
the intersections between communication, media and the arts in 
contemporary societies. Its interdisciplinary scope includes philosophy 
of communication, media theory, philosophy of technology, critical 
theory and aesthetics. The journal welcomes contributions in English, 
Spanish, Portuguese and French.

No payment from authors is required. There are no submission, article 
processing or publication charges.

Schedule
Submission deadline: 30 January 2027
Notification of decisions: April 2027
Second round of review and editing: May 2027
Publication: July 2027


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