Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico (special issue)

Deadline: April 14, 2023

The percentage of citizens who avoid consuming news has sharply increased over the last year according to the 2022 Digital News Report. The high levels of confusion and distrust brought about by the infodemic that accompanied the global pandemic have given rise to social apathy and a search for mechanisms of disconnection and self-protection.  Social media have distorted notions of authority, as the most complex media system in history took shape, generating an emotional and existential impact on journalism. In this context, disinformation has become a cause of concern in newsrooms and a priority line of research at the global level. Most studies have focused on the messages, conspiracy theories, interest groups and superspreaders of such content, and their impact on citizens. It is therefore pertinent and necessary to consider the perspective of professional journalists, reflecting their expertise when it comes to information, with quantitative, qualitative and theoretical approaches that help to advance knowledge.

In this special issue, we aim to examine the behaviour of journalists towards disinformation, how they react in the face of information disorder, integrating formulas into their routines to handle such content, and how they draw attention to the problem on media agendas and restrict its spread guided by their social responsibility. Proposals that focus on the specialised skills and training that are needed as well as the rise of new professional roles will also be welcome.

This call for articles is also open to recent events, such as the implementation of the 2022 Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation in Europe. How journalists perceive the changes introduced on Twitter, the migration to platforms with a greater commitment to content moderation, and the challenges that might arise in the metaverse are examples of relevant reflections that will be addressed in this monograph.

We seek constructive articles that also reflect on innovative solutions, such as collaboration between media, institutions and fact-checkers, or those proceeding from participation in hackathons to build prototypes that make it possible to swiftly detect false content and prevent its spread, using artificial intelligence.

The following are some of the potential themes:

• Journalistic coverage and treatment of disinformation.
  
• New professional roles and routines related to disinformation.
  
• Fact-checkers as a journalistic source.
  
• The relation of journalists with propagators of disinformation.
  
• Quality and usability of content generated by fact-checkers.
  
• Narrative innovation to combat disinformation in vulnerable audiences.
  
• Active audience collaboration in fact-checking tasks supported by mass media.
  
• The ethical dimension and guides to good practice within the journalistic profession to avoid the production and diffusion of false content.
  
• Professional deontology in disinformation contexts.
  
• Journalists’ participation in media education to prevent disinformation.
  
• Data journalism, visualisation and disinformation.
  
• Usability of bots in journalistic contexts to stop false content.
  
• Metaverse, journalistic practices and disinformation.
  
• Initiatives based on artificial intelligence to restrict disinformation.
  
• Perception of experts in artificial intelligence on the future of the diffusion of false content.
  

Submissions must conform to the indications of the journal https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESMP/about/submissions  and must be sent via OJS platform: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESMP/about/submissions

By indicating in the section "comments for the editor", or in the header of the article, the title of the monograph: “Impact of disinformation”

Deadline for submission is April 14, 2023.

Invited editors:

Bella Palomo - Bella Palomo is a Full Professor in the Journalism Department at the University of Malaga (Spain). Palomo has focused her line of research on digital journalism, professional routines, social media and active audiences during the last two decades. She has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Washington, Rutgers, Miami (US), and Federal de Bahia (Brazil). She is also a member of the editorial board of several journals (Digital Journalism, Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, Dígitos, Hipertext), and is responsible for DisinformationResearch.com. The aim of this website is to increase the visibility of specialized research on information disorder. She is the principal researcher of the MEDIO (Media & Data Innovation Observatory) research group and the national project ‘The Impact of Disinformation in Journalism: Contents, Professional Routines and Audiences.’ She coordinated the book Politics of Disinformation (Wiley, 2021). She is a member of national and international evaluation committees. 

Edson C. Tandoc Jr. – is Associate Professor and the Associate Chair for Research at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he is the Director of the Centre for Information Integrity and the Internet (IN-cube). He is also an Associate Editor of two journals: Digital Journalism and Human Communication Research and the Vice Chair of the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association. He is the author of Analyzing Analytics: Disrupting Journalism One Click at a Time (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of Critical Incidents in Journalism: Pivotal Moments Reshaping Journalism around the World (Routledge, 2020). His studies have focused on the impact of journalistic roles, new technologies, and audience feedback on the news gatekeeping process. He has also looked at how readers make sense of critical incidents in journalism and take part in reconsidering journalistic norms; and how changing news consumption patterns facilitate the spread of fake news.

Rodrigo Cunha - Professor at the Department of Communication at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil). PhD in Contemporary Communication and Culture at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil). He is the leader of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Journalistic Information Design (GRID), with researchers from Journalism, Design, Information Sciences and Computer Sciences. He is the author of the books Design da Informação e Inovação em Produtos Jornalísticos para Tablets (LabCom-IFP, 2017) and co-editor of Interfaces Contemporâneas no Ecossistema Midiático (RIA Editorial, 2020). He worked on the design, visualization and artificial intelligence team on the Convergent Journalism Laboratory project (CNPq/CAPES/FAPESB, 2011-2016); and collaborated with the Spanish project “El Impacto de la Disinformación en el Periodismo: Contenidos, Rutinas Profesionales y Audiencias” (Ref. PID2019-108956RB-I00). During the 2022-2023 course, he is a visiting researcher at the Universidad de Málaga with the DATOUCH project for the development of an accessibility protocol that allows visually impaired people to view data journalism. He has written numerous articles on data journalism, information design, data visualization and accessibility.