[Air-L] CfP iCS Symposium on Challenges to Studying Disinformation (27-28 October 2018), The IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

[Marco T. Bastos]

We are organizing a symposium about disinformation and data access in
Copenhagen and submissions will be considered for a special issue in iCS.
Abstracts are due 31 July. We look forward to your submission and please
circulate this to anyone who may be interested. 

Locked out of Social Platforms: An iCS Symposium on Challenges to Studying
Disinformation (27-28 October 2018), The IT University of Copenhagen,
Denmark

Deadline for abstracts: 31 July 2018. Abstracts/biographies/contact details
should be sent to dan.mercea.1 at city.ac.uk

Keynotes: Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology), Lina Dencik
(University of Cardiff), Alice Marwick (University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill), Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam), and Katrin Weller (GESIS
Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences). 

A selection of papers presented at the symposium will be published in a
special issue of the journal Information, Communication & Society (iCS).
More info: https://blogit.itu.dk/ics2018/

After years of exalting rhetoric praising the democratisation of public
discourse with the diffusion of the internet, informed observers have
sounded a note of alarm about the scope for the distortion of electoral
processes in democratic countries. The Brexit campaign, along with recent
elections in the US and France have been linked to disinformation,
misinformation or propaganda campaigns seeking to strategically diffuse
content that heightens partisanship and erodes the general trust in
democratic institutions.

In the run-up to the 2018 US mid-term elections,  the aftermath of the Irish
abortion referendum and the Italian general elections, this two-day
symposium aims to address the topical question of how independent, ethical
research on dis/misinformation in political communication can be conducted
in a corporate environment that favours platform ‘lockdowns’ and the
throttling of API access in response to the strategic use of data analytics,
bots, trolls, fake news, and dis/misinformation operations in electoral
politics, public information campaigns, and activist communication.

What are the challenges for independent academic research examining these
developments? How can researchers investigate disinformation in a context of
narrowing access to trace data?  How can these challenges be met, and what
meaningful ways can be imagined for making social media platforms more
accountable to the democratic constituencies where they operate? How is such
disruptive communication designed, executed, with what effects and how are
these measured? What data policies can be envisaged to strike a balance
between safeguarding privacy and enabling academic research into the impact
dis/misinformation or propaganda campaigns have on social media and beyond,
in the attitudes and behaviours of their users? 

We encourage submissions that address but are not limited to the following
aims:

* 	reflect on the structural and contextual factors that have acted as
fertile ground for dis/misinformation and propaganda;
* 	determine the scope and intricacies of dis/misinformation and
propaganda campaigns;
* 	explore the relationship between dis/misinformation and the
polarization of public opinion;
* 	consider the weaponization of social media platforms and discuss the
interdependencies among the vast plurality of newsmakers operating in the
current hybrid media ecosystem; 
* 	reflect on the political, cultural or socio-economic costs of
distortive communication, the relevance of such research to industry and
public policy and the ethical implications attendant to such studies;
* 	untangle technological design choices and ideological leanings that
shape platform communication, enable dis/misinformation and propaganda and
their bearing on independent research; 
* 	examine the implications for academic research of controlled access
by private owners of data produced in public communication spaces such as
the Facebook page of a political candidate, and methodological solutions for
sustaining the investigation of these topics;
* 	consider the changing social media research landscape as the new EU
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in May 2018.

We invite 500-word abstracts outlining empirical, theoretical or
policy-orientated papers that address these or cognate topics. Abstracts
should be accompanied by a 100-word biography of the presenter(s) together
with contact details.