[Air-L] [CFP] Special Collection for the Communication and Media Section of Global Perspectives on “Trust and Digital Platforms”

[Sora Park]

Dear Colleagues


This may be of interest to our members.




***********************************************************************************************


*Call for papers*

Special Collection for the Communication and Media Section of *Global
Perspectives* on “Trust and Digital Platforms”



*Estimated Timeline*

1 December 2019 - 500-word abstracts

   - Please submit abstracts to Terry Flew (t.flew at qut.edu.au) and Sora
   Park (sora.park at canberra.edu.au)

1 February 2020 - notification of invitation to submit full papers
(6000-8000 words)

1 August 2020 - submission of full papers

1 December 2020 - review process complete

1 May 2021 - publication of articles



*Trust and Digital Platforms*

 As online activities and experiences are increasingly mediated through
digital platforms, a series of scandals and ‘public shocks’ (Ananny &
Gillespie, 2017) have raised concerns about privacy and security, the
misuse of user data, algorithmic biases, and the public distribution of
objectionable and sometimes abhorrent content through the internet (Flew,
Martin, & Suzor, 2019). Legislators and regulators in many countries are
now engaged in public enquiries and the development of new laws to apply
public interest standards to digital platforms, as First Amendment
arguments about freedom of online expression and claims that the platforms
are simply intermediaries are increasingly under challenge (Napoli, 2019).



This special issue proposes to view such questions from the perspective of
trust. International surveys have documented a decline in trust in social,
political institutions over time, including rising distrust of the
media (Edelman,
2019). Manifestations of declining public trust are variously seen in the
rise of populist political movements (Norris & Ingelhart, 2019), concerns
about ‘fake news’ and ‘deepfakes’ (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017), and scandals
surrounding leading public institutions, from financial institutions and
digital platform companies to political parties and religious
organizations. Trust is a multifaceted concept, and important contributions
have been made to the field from philosophy, political science, sociology
and economics, as well as communication and media studies. To take one
example, the concept of a public sphere rests upon an underlying degree of
trust in journalists and the organizations involved in the production and
distribution of news and information (Coleman, 2012).



Amidst talk about whether the concerns about the power of digital platforms
and ‘surveillance capitalism’ (Zuboff, 2019) points towards ‘the end of
trust’(McSweeney’s, 2019), this special issue poses questions such as:



·       Do communication scholars have original insights into questions of
trust, and how can they draw upon other fields of scholarship around trust
issues?

·       Is trust or distrust a concept that is empirically measurable? Are
there lessons from earlier ‘social capital’ debates about how to understand
relations of trust, and what is the relationship of digital technologies to
trust issues?

·       Can government regulation address the power of digital platforms
and contribute to better relations of trust between platform users and
providers? What lessons can be learnt from laws passed in other
jurisdictions (e.g. European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation,
Germany’s Online Hate Speech laws, Singapore’s anti-Fake News laws)?

·       Does the global and decentralized nature of such platforms
necessitate that the lead be taken by non-governmental organizations, or
that the solutions will be essentially technological in nature (e.g. a
combination of blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies)?

·       Is regulation of digital platforms best understood as being within
the remit of communications policies, or are the most appropriate measures
primarily related to economic policies, such as anti-trust and consumer
protection laws, or by regarding digital platforms as ‘information
fiduciaries’ (Balkin, 2018; Dobkin, 2018)?



*References:*

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social Media and Fake News in the 2016
Election. *Journal of Economic Perspectives*, *31*(2), 211–236.

Ananny, M., & Gillespie, T. (2017). Public platforms: Beyond the cycle of
shocks and exceptions. *Interventions: Communication Research and Practice*.
Presented at the 67th Annual Conference of the International Communications
Association, San Diego, CA.

Balkin, J. (2018). Free Speech is a Triangle. *Columbia Law Review*, *118*,
2011–2055.

Coleman, S. (2012). Believing the News: From sinking trust to atrophied
efficacy. *European Journal of Communication*, *27*(1), 35–45.

Dobkin, A. (2018). Information Fiduciaries in Practice: Data Privacy and
User Expectations,. *Berkeley Technology Law Journal*, (33).

Edelman. (2019). *2019 Edelman Trust Barometer*. Retrieved from
https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer

Flew, T., Martin, F., & Suzor, N. P. (2019). Internet Regulation as Media
Policy: Rethinking the question of digital communication platform
governance. *Journal of Digital Media and Policy*, *10*(1), 33–50.

McSweeney’s. (2019). *The End of Trust*. San Francisco: McSweeney’s.

Napoli, P. (2019). What If More Speech Is No Longer the Solution? First
Amendment Theory Meets Fake News and the Filter Bubble. *Federal
Communications Law Journal*, *70*(1), 57–104.

Norris, P., & Ingelhart, R. (2019). *Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and
Authoritarian Populism*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zuboff, S. (2019). *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a
Human Future at the New Frontier of Power*. New York: Hachette.





*Practicalities*

Please submit a 500-word abstract to Terry Flew (t.flew at qut.edu.au) and
Sora Park (sora.park at canberra.edu.au) before 1 December 2019.







The special collection will be published as part of the Communication and
Media Section of the *Global Perspectives* journal. The special issue will
publish full paper submissions of 6,000-8,000 words. Publication guidelines
can be found here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVInPIfIhzuBvZ2o_DoFG4Jf6FI3UaeXiEnzzLf-gPc/edit>
.



*About the journal*

*Global Perspectives* (GP) is an online-only, peer-reviewed,
transdisciplinary journal seeking to advance social science research and
debates in a globalizing world, specifically in terms of concepts,
theories, methodologies, and evidence bases. Work published in the journal
is enriched by invited perspectives, through scholarly annotations, that
enhance its global and interdisciplinary implications.



GP is devoted to the study of global patterns and developments across a
wide range of topics and fields, among them trade and markets, security and
sustainability, communication and media, justice and law, governance and
regulation, culture and value systems, identities, environmental
interfaces, technology-society interfaces, shifting geographies and
migration.



GP sets out to help overcome national and disciplinary fragmentation and
isolation.  GP starts from the premise that the world that gave rise to the
social sciences in their present form is no more. The national and
disciplinary approaches that developed over the last century are
increasingly insufficient to capture the complexities of the global
realities of a world that has changed significantly in a relatively short
period of time.  New concepts, approaches and forms of academic discourse
may be called for.



*About the Communication and Media Section of Global Perspectives*

Section Editor: Payal Arora, Erasmus University Rotterdam


The ‘global turn’ in communications, advances in mobile technologies and
the rise of digital social networks are changing the world´s media
landscapes, creating complex disjunctures between economy, culture, and
society at local, national, and transnational levels. The role of
traditional mass media - print, radio and television - is changing as well.
In many cases, traditional journalism is declining, while that of
user-generated content by bloggers, podcasters, and digital activists is
gaining currency worldwide, as is the impact of robotics and artificial
intelligence on communication systems. Today, researchers find themselves
at important junctures in their inquiries that require innovations in
concepts, frameworks, methodologies and empirics. *Global Perspectives* aims
to be a forum for scholars from across multiple disciplines and fields, and
the Communication and Media Section invites submissions on cutting-edge
research on changing media and communication systems globally.