October 2-5, 2020

Braga, Portugal

Deadline: January 5, 2020

The Re/media.Lab – Laboratory and Incubator of Regional Media is calling for proposals for a panel submission to the 8^th European Communication Conference: ”Communication and Trust: Building Safe, Sustainable and Promising Futures” to be held in Braga, Portugal, October 2-5, 2020. The panel aims to reflect on the Challenges for Local Journalism in Disinformation Times.

Fake news has recently gained prominence as the way media content is presented and consumed on social networks. The pressure of fake news tends to favor audience’s quick and superficial perception, with little incentive for more careful reflection, in which emotion and polarization play an additional role. In local contexts, the existence of offline social networks supported by close social ties may strengthen the occurrence of endogamic contexts that difficult changes and diversity.

Our group is interested in receiving abstracts proposing a theoretical and experimental approach to fake news in local journalism highlighting the following issues:

a) Disinformation and fake news in local and communitarian contexts.

b) The risk that close ties inside local communities induce an endogamic perception of public life, including effects such as like-minded thoughts. polarized bubbles or the closure of the agenda process.

c) The role and perception of local journalists on the issues related to disinformation and fake news at the local e communitarian levels.

d) The role played by perception of the public on the issues related to disinformation and fake news at local and communitarian levels.

e) Presentation, description or suggestion of original local media-literacy strategies as an element of prevention and combat against disinformation in these contexts.

f) Presentation, description or suggestion of ombudsman strategies as an element of preventing disinformation in these contexts.

g) Presentation of new or reformulated theoretical, experimental and methodological approaches to the studies of disinformation processes in local contexts.

To comply with the ECREA guidelines, individual abstracts of 500 words can be submitted. Abstract titles are limited to 30 words. All abstracts must be written in English and up to10 authors can be included. The presenting author must be listed first and only one author can be nominated as the presenting author.

Please send your abstract to João Carlos Correia at the University of Beira Interior (jcorreia@ubi.pt ) and Pedro Jerónimo (pj@ubi.pt ) until January 5. This will enable Re/media.Lab committee to peer review contributions ahead of the ECREA deadline on January 15.

The 2020 conference is organized by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the University of Minho. For more information: www.ecrea2020braga.eu

Information on the Re/media.Lab: www.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/remedialab/