Polish media studies journals - history and present state

Abstract

The article presents the development of Polish media studies journals in the period 1945-2024. The article consists of 4 parts. The first outlines the research traditions: an analysis of publications issued before the period of institutionalisation. The second discusses the period 1945-1995, where the profiles and specifics of 18 periodicals (scientific and professional) published in this period are presented in more detailed manner. The third part presents the period 1996-2004 and the development of the 10 leading periodicals of this time. The fourth part focuses on the 2005-2024 market analysis. The calculations reveal that at the beginning of this period (2004), 8 scientific media studies journals were published, in the following years 24 new ones were launched and 16 were suspended. As a result, 16 strictly media studies journals remained on the market at the end of the period under study. Furthermore, 13 periodicals formally belonging to other disciplines, but systematically publishing media studies content were identified, as well as 13 titles from other disciplines, which occasionally print media and social communication content. Bibliometric methods were used for the study. The empirical material for the first three parts of the article (A, B, C) was provided by The Citation Index of the History of Polish Media (ICHMP), while the measurement unit was the article (N_A=415, N_B=10105, N_C=3712). The research material for the fourth part (D) was provided by the analysis of data from the Arianta database and the ministerial lists of scored journals (2021, 2023, 2024). The N_D studied collection consisted of 115 Polish titles formally belonging to the discipline of social media communication sciences (plus 4 additions), while the corpus of texts selected on the basis of content analysis contained 1051 articles.