[Air-L] CfP Disinformation-for-Hire and Click Farming (Social Media + Society Special Issue)

[Rafael Grohmann]

   Colleagues,
   Please consider submitting your
   abstract. https://journals.sagepub.com/page/sms/collections/cfp
   On August 18th, 1:30PM EST, Jonathan and I will do a livestream
   featuring the call for papers. We will send you more information soon.
   And help us spread the word.


   Disinformation-for-Hire and Click Farming around the World: Identities,
   Incentives, Infrastructures

   Special collection of Social Media + Society (Open Access Journal)
   Abstract submission deadline: October 15, 2021
   Full paper submission deadline: March 1, 2022
   Special Issue Editors: Rafael Grohmann (Unisinos University, Brazil)
   and Jonathan Corpus Ong (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)
   From state-sponsored propagandists using paid troll armies, to
   commercially motivated data analytics firms selling their toolkits to
   politicians, and platform workers producing memes for overseas clients,
   the global industry of disinformation production has only
   professionalized and diversified. This special issue for Social Media +
   Society aims to deepen understanding about the social identities, work
   arrangements, and political and commercial motivations of an emerging
   class of digital disinformation workers. We are interested in critical
   and interdisciplinary research that examines the political economy,
   specifically the digital and creative industries that propel and
   produce disinformation.
   The special issue’s focus on business models and disinformation worker
   identities in global context aims to expand on disinformation studies’
   analysis of “fake news” and hate speech as content that require better
   policing or fact-checking. It also aims to expand platform studies’
   research agenda and consider the range of digital professionals and
   entrepreneurs who buy and sell engagement on social media–with
   pernicious political consequences especially in contexts where
   dissenting voices are suppressed.
   Thus, we solicit submissions that discuss the diverse worker
   hierarchies and conditions, outsourced gig arrangements, money
   politics, and/or regulatory loopholes in the promotional industries
   that enable the strategic production of disinformation. We are
   interested in interdisciplinary and ethnographic research that engages
   with the deep stories of workers in “dark PR” firms (Silverman,
   Lytyvenko & Kung 2020; Verwey & Muir 2019), data analytics firms
   (Briant 2021), Latin American and Indonesian Instagram click farms
   (Lindquist 2021), and “propaganda secretary” offices (Hassan & Hitchen
   2019). We are also interested in normative discussions about complicity
   and collusion in digital industries as well as scholarly
   self-reflection about the challenges of doing engaged research about
   disinformation (Ong 2020).
   We are especially interested in submissions that shed light across
   these themes:
     * ethnographic portraits of paid trolls, meme producers, click farm
       workers, and political strategists
     * precarity, aspiration, and the tactics of resistance of digital
       workers / disinformation producers
     * the ethics of representing perpetrators; whistleblowers as
       unreliable narrators
     * participatory disinformation (Starbird 2021) and networked
       disinformation
     * the infrastructure, materiality, and “platform trees” (van Dijck
       2020) of click farm platforms with mainstream social media
     * moral justifications of disinformation producers (Ong & Cabañes
       2019)
     * the complicity of advertising and public relations to “organized
       lying” (Edwards 2021)
     * legitimacy, respectability, and plausible deniability; the role of
       intermediaries or brokers in the disinformation industries
     * mental health of workers in digital shadow economies
     * the social proximities between content moderators and paid trolls
       in the global South
     * regulatory loopholes in political marketing and PR; experiments
       with self-regulation and codes of ethics in digital campaigning
       (Udupa 2019)
     * auto-ethnographic reflections of engaged scholars about their
       experiences working with governments, platforms, workers, and
       journalists to shed light on disinformation shadow economies

   The special issue will include an interview with ProPublica's Craig
   Silverman and a response to the contributions from Dr Joan Donovan.
   Timeline
   300- to 500-word abstracts should be emailed
   to rafaelgrohmann at unisinos.br and jcong at umass.edu by October 15, 2021.
   The abstract should articulate: 1) the issue or research question to be
   discussed, 2) the methodological or critical framework used, and 3) the
   expected findings or conclusions. Feel free to consult with the Special
   Issue Editors about your article ideas and potential angles or
   approaches.
   Decisions will be communicated to the authors by November 1, 2021. Full
   papers of the selected abstracts should be submitted by March 1, 2022.

   References
   Briant, E. (2021). Lessons from the Cambridge Analytica Crisis:
   Confronting Today’s (Dis)information Challenges. The Journal of
   Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 3(3),
   125–127. https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v3i3.2775

   Edwards. L. (2021). Organised Lying and Professional Legitimacy: Public
   Relations’ Accountability in the Disinformation Debate. European
   Journal of Communication, 36(2),
   168–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323120966851

   Hassan, I. & Hitchen, J. (2019, April 18). Nigeria’s Propaganda
   Secretaries. Mail &
   Guardian. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-04-18-00-nigerias-propaganda-se
   cretaries/

   Lindquist, J. (2021). Good Enough Imposters: The Market for Instagram
   Followers in Indonesia and Beyond. In: Woolgar, S. et al (eds). The
   Imposter as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and
   Charlatans. Bristol University Press.

   Ong, J.C. (2020). "Limits and Luxuries of Slow Research in Times of
   Radical War: How Should We Represent Perpetrators?" Journal of Digital
   War 1(1): 1-6.

   Ong, J. C., & Cabañes, J. V. A. (2019). When Disinformation Studies
   Meets Production Studies: Social Identities and Moral Justifications in
   the Political Trolling Industry. International Journal of
   Communication, 13, 5771–5790.

   Silverman, C., Lytyvenko, J. & Kung, W. (2020, January 6).
   Disinformation for Hire: How a New Breed of PR Firms Is Selling Lies
   Online. Buzzfeed
   News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/disinformatio
   n-for-hire-black-pr-firms
   Starbird, K. (2021, May 6). Participatory Disinformation: The Big Lie
   during the 2020 Election and the January 6, 2021 Attack on the US
   Capitol. Twitter
   thread. https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1390408145428643842
   Udupa, S. (2019, January 31). India Needs a Fresh Strategy to Tackle
   Online Extreme
   Speech. Engage. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/election-2019-india-n
   eeds-fresh-strategy-totackle-new- digital-tools.
   Van Dijck, J. (2020) Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Visualizing
   Platformization and Its Governance. New Media & Society, 1-19. Online
   First.
   Verwey, S., & Muir, C. (2019). Bell Pottinger and the Dark Art of
   Public Relations: Ethics of individuality Versus Ethics of
   Communality. Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in
   Southern Africa, 38(1), 96-116.