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Style Guide

Please note that while Platform editors will happily work with authors to prepare articles for publication, submissions should conform to our house style and referencing guide. Submissions that do not follow our house style and referencing guide will be returned to authors for revision to meet these guidelines.

Note: Submissions should be formatted in 1.5-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font and should not include tabs or section breaks. Number all pages, starting with the title page.

1. Spelling

Spelling should conform to either Australian or Oxford standards (words ending ‘-ise’ or ‘-ize’ are both acceptable, but avoid American spellings, i.e. ‘color’, ‘analyze’, ‘center’, etc.).

Hyphenate compound adjectives (“an eighteenth-century painting”, “a working-class hero”) but do not use hyphens between adjectives and nouns (“a painting from the eighteenth century”, “a hero of the working class”).

2. Notes

Use endnotes, not footnotes.

Tip: Notes should only expand on a point or include observations or background information not essential to the paper’s argument, and not be employed as a dumping ground for long lists of references or key arguments – these should be kept in the main text.

3. Acronyms and abbreviations

Explain each and every first occurrence. Example: “World Trade Organisation (WTO)”. “WTO” may then be used for the rest of the article. Use full stops after an abbreviation (e.g., i.e.) but not a contraction (Mr, eds, vol). Do not use full stops with abbreviations consisting of capitals (NSW, RSPCA, PhD).

Always write out the full name and title of a public figure in the first instance; do not assume the reader will know every prominent figure. Example: “US President Barack Obama”, “Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard”. “President Obama” or “Obama” and “Gillard” or “Ms Gillard” may then be used for the rest of the article.

4. Numbers

Use numerals for all numbers above ten, except at the beginning of a sentence. Numbers that are indefinite (“about a thousand”, “more than thirty”) should be rendered in words. Numbers below 9999 do not require commas. Use commas in numbers above 9999 (12,563).

Percentages should be written as “39 percent” in the text, but “39%” in tables. Use figures for sums of money, weights, measures and times.

5. Dates and times

Dates should be written in the day-month-year format. Example: “Samuel Johnson died on 13 December 1784.”

Decades should be rendered as 1970s, not 1970’s, ’70s or seventies. Times should be written as 7am, 11pm and 7.30am, 11.45pm.

Spans of years should be written as 2004–05 except when referring to a financial year, where 2004/05 should be used.

6. Person and use of gender pronoun

Use “they” or “their”, not he/she, for the third person singular pronoun. Favour the universal second-person pronoun “you” over the indefinite third-person pronoun “one”.

7. Quotations

Use double quotation marks for quotes. Single quotation marks should be used for quotations within quotations. Example:

In Crowds and Power, Canetti (1960, p. 38) describes the Standing on Arafat, in which pilgrims listen to the sermon of a preacher: “His sermon is an uninterrupted glorification of God and the pilgrims respond with one formula, repeated a thousand times: ‘We wait for your commands, O Lord. We wait for your commands’.”

(In the example above, the quote from Canetti is enclosed by double quotation marks, while single quotation marks surround the words of the pilgrims that Canetti quotes at this point.)

Quotations of more than 50 words (or 4 lines) should be indented on the left and separated from the main text by paragraph breaks above and below.
All quotations from published works should be rendered exactly as they were published. Do not alter spelling or punctuation, even to suit house style. If it is necessary to insert words to clarify a quote, put them between square brackets. Example: “The discovery of this bird [the Paradise Pigeon] saved the Norfolk Island settlement from starvation.”

Ellipses (…) should be used to mark any cuts. Example: “The troops at the Somme… suffered from damp, cold and exposure”. An ellipsis at the end of a sentence replaces the full stop. Example: “She established the company in 1993… Within two years it had a turnover of $30 million.”

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Referencing and Citation

PLATFORM uses the APA style for referencing and citations. Any submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will be returned to authors to address this before we send them for review.

Citation

In-text citations should be enclosed in parentheses, in the following order: last name of the author, year of publication, page number(s). For the first mention of an author use their full name then refer to them by their surname thereafter.

1. Single author

For indirect quotations, include the author’s surname and year of publication. Examples:

Historically, the study of communication technologies has focused on their content at the expense of the technologies themselves (Kittler, 1999).
As both Habermas (1966) and Rawls (1971) argue, rational thought is essential to the proper functioning of a democratic public sphere.

For direct quotations, also include the page number (preceded by the abbreviation ‘p.’, or ‘pp.’ for multiple pages). Examples:

As Baudrillard (1994, p. 1) writes, “the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth”.

According to Spoo, critics of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man “have suggested that one source of Stephen’s historical nightmare may be his callow aestheticism” which reveals “an ambivalence on his part toward history and historical knowledge” (1994, pp. 39-40).

Note: For quotations with no page number (i.e. from a website or online journal article) write “no page” in the first instance (Bruns, 2008, no page), then use the abbreviation “n.p.” for the rest of the paper (Bruns, 2008, n.p.).

2. Multiple authors

For publications with two authors, list both authors’ surnames, separated by “and”, not “&”. Example:

In parasocial relationships “the interaction, characteristically, is one-sided, non dialectical, controlled by the performer, and not susceptible to mutual development” (Horton and Wohl, 1956, p. 215).

For publications with three or more authors, include the first or main author of the publication followed by the abbreviation et al (Castells et al, 2007). Include all subsequent names of the authors in the references at the end of the paper, however.

3. Multiple quotations and lists

For multiple quotations, separate each publication by a semicolon. List them in alphabetical order. Example:

There is a plethora of contemporary literature on the emergence of global cities (Castells, 1996; Latham and Sassen, 2005; Leach, 2001; Sassen, 2001).

If there are two different authors with the same last name, distinguish them by the initial of their first name (J. Mitchell, 2004; W. Mitchell, 1998). For publications published in the same year by the same author distinguish each one with a letter of the alphabet (Lovink, 2008a, 2008b).

4. Webpages

When quoting a specific webpage or online article, such as an online journal article, news story, podcast or weblog post, use an in-text citation and include the details of the webpage in the list of references at the end of the article (see information on referencing webpages in the ‘Reference Guide’ section below). Example:

A recent report by the Australian government recommends using new technologies to “achieve a more consultative, participatory and transparent government” (Government 2.0 Taskforce Report, 2009).

However, when mentioning or directing readers to generic websites (such as search engines, social networking sites, Wikipedia articles, corporate websites, etc), simply include a hyperlink to the website (ensuring that the text displayed is descriptive) in the text and do not include it in the list of references. Examples:

The Wikipedia entry on media studies lists a wide range of disciplines as influences in the historical development of the field.
Barack Obama’s Twitter profile is used in conjunction with other social networking initiatives from the White House website such as its weblog and podcasts to promote its e-democracy credentials.

5. Multimedia

If you wish to embed multimedia content created by someone other than yourself in the article, include the name of the author and the source (i.e. URL, name and date of the newspaper/magazine/etc in which it appeared) below where you intend for the image/video/audio file to appear, as well as the relevant copyright licence which might apply (see the ‘Guidelines for Embedding Multimedia’ below for more information about this). At the end of the article, provide a ‘List of figures’ with the details of all multimedia content included in the article.

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Referencing

All referenced publications must appear at the end of the document in alphabetical order; include any additional resources not cited in the text in a separate bibliography entitled ‘Further Reading’.

Do not list publications from different media under separate headings, for instance ‘Literature’, ‘Websites’, etc. However, if the document includes a lengthy list of electronic media sources such as films, music, or videogames these may be listed under a separate Filmography or Discography.

1. Books

Burke, K. (1969). A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lash, S. & Lury, C. (2007). The Global Culture Industry. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Zielinski, S. (2006). Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (G. Custance, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

2a. Edited books

Fuller, M. (Ed.). (2008) Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. and Hansen, M. (Eds.). (2010). Critical Terms for Media Studies. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

2b. Book chapter

Tomlinson, J. (2003). Globalization and Cultural Identity. In D. Held & A. McGrew (Eds.), The Global Transformations Reader (2nd ed., pp. 269–272).

Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

3. Journal articles

Deleuze, G. (1992, Winter). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, 59, 3-7.

Katz, E., & Liebes, T. (2007). ‘No More Peace!’: How Disaster, Terror and War Have Upstaged Media Events. International Journal of Communication, 1(2), 157-166.

Kellner, D. (2009). Barack Obama and Celebrity Spectacle. International Journal of Communication, 3, 715-741.

4. Online journal articles

Chin, E. (2010). Bearing Witness – Between the Professional and the Personal: An Interview with Daniel Dayan. PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication 2(1), 34-45. Retrieved from /platform/resources/vol2_1/PlatformVol2Issue1_Dayan.pdf

Rossiter, N. (2003). Report: Creative Labour and the Role of Intellectual Property. Fibreculture Journal, 1. Retrieved from http://one.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-001

5. Newspaper articles

Kelly, F., & Twomey, J. (2005, 8 July) Suicide Bomber Sat Next to Me… and Blew Bus Up. Daily Express, p. N2.

6. Unpublished thesis, dissertation or manuscript

Leorke, D. (2008). The Rhetoric of Play: Locative Gaming and the Global City. Unpublished Minor Thesis, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

7a. Webpage (author and date known)

Government 2.0 Taskforce Report. (2009). Engage: Getting on With Government 2.0. Retrieved 21 July, 2010 from http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/gov20taskforcereport/

Singel, R. (2009). Google Uncensors China Search Engine, Wired.com. Retrieved 21 July, 2010 from http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/google-uncensors-china-search-engine/

7b. Webpage (author unknown)

Which Political Leaders Have Given the Best Political Speech? (2009). Retrieved 21 July, 2010 from http://www.fpolitics.com/political-leaders

7c. Webpage (date unkown)

Metacritic. (n.d.). The Wire Season 4. Retrieved 21 July, 2010 from http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/wireseason4

8. Podcast

O’Hagan, A. (2009, 2 December). Andrew O’Hagan on Samuel Johnson. The New York Review of Books. Podcast retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/podcasts/issues/2009/dec/02/andrew-ohagan-on-samuel-johnson/

9. Message posted to online discussion group/forum/blog

Simons, M. (2010, 29 June). Google Compromises on China. Message posted to http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2010/06/29/google-compromises-on-china/

Stalder, F. (2010, 1 July). ‹nettime› Autonomy and Control in the Era of Post-Privacy. Message posted to http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1007/msg00000.html

10. Films and videogames

David Fincher. (2010). The Social Network.

Rockstar San Diego. (2010). Red Dead Redemption.

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Copyright

All authors contributing to Platform (including general and thematic articles, essays, reviews and interviews) must sign a licensing agreement conferring rights to The University of Melbourne, as the publisher of the journal, to upload their publication on the Platform website, change formatting, use work for Platform promotional material, and re-publish in printed anthologies. As part of the licensing agreement, authors must also choose a copyright licence, which determines the rights of the public to use or reuse their contribution.

As part of our commitment to open access, Platform encourages the use of open content licences such as Creative Commons in the distribution of content published in this journal. In line with Platform’s commitment to open access, by default content created by the journal (such as editorials) is released to the world under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. This is a very broad copyright licence that permits end-users to share and remix the work, including for commercial purposes, as long as they attribute Platform and/or the author of the work. For the full details of the licence, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

If you want your submission to be made available to the public on the same terms, please indicate the ‘Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia licence’ as your selection on the ‘Publication Licensing Agreement’ below. Alternatively, you may wish to select one of the other five Creative Commons licences. These licences provide similar rights to share the material, subject to restrictions on commercial use and/or remixing of the work. Authors are also welcome to choose the traditional All Rights Reserved licence option for their work. A fact sheet describing the different licences and what they mean is available at http://creativecommons.org.au/materials/factsheets/cc-licences.pdf.

Authors can download the Platform Licence Agreement here:

Author License Agreement (PDF format)

Note: Licence agreements must be signed by hand and either scanned then emailed to PlatformJMC@gmail.com, or printed out and posted via snail mail no later than two weeks prior to the publication deadline to:

Platform: Journal of Media and Communication

Room 216 West Tower

John Medley Building

School of Culture and Communication

The University of Melbourne

Victoria 3010

Australia

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Embedding multimedia

Platform encourages the embedding of multimedia content within written submissions where appropriate. If you intend to embed multimedia, please follow the guidelines below:

• Images must be submitted separately as .jpg files and in high-resolution (minimum 300dpi)
• Video and sound clips must be cut to the exact size, and submitted separately as Flash video/audio (.flv, .f4v, etc) files
• Do not embed multimedia files in the Word document. Instead, please insert reference point(s) in your paper where you would like to include multimedia content
• Include captions along with the source(s) of the multimedia file(s) at the end of your article.

Note: Please indicate whether the multimedia content was created by you or someone else. If you use multimedia content created by others, please fully attribute the image/video/file and specify the relevant copyright licence that the content falls under, by indicating whether it is ‘All Rights Reserved: [Name of Author/Creator]’ or ‘Licensed under Creative Commons licence [details of licence]’.