[Air-L] CFP: Symposium on Misinformation & Marginalization

Tue May 30 09:15:44 PDT 2023

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to announce the call for papers for the Symposium on
Misinformation & Marginalization to be hosted by the Center for
Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill on October 16, 2023. The symposium theme focuses on
the interactions between discourses of misinformation circulated by and
about marginalized communities, featuring a keynote by renowned scholar Dr.
Sarah Banet-Weiser. This hybrid one-day symposium, to be held both
in-person and online, will consist of three themed panels exploring
misinformation and marginalization from different angles: gender and
sexuality, diasporic communities, and global perspectives on race and
religion. See the CFP below for more details.

The submission deadline for paper proposals (extended abstracts of 800 -
1000 words) is June 30, 2023.

Please share this call widely with your networks!

*The CFP: *

Misinformation & Marginalization Symposium

October 16, 2023

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Organized and hosted by the Center for Information, Technology, and Public
Life (CITAP <http://citap.unc.edu/>)

This symposium on Misinformation & Marginalization will explore global and
comparative frames for mis- and disinformation studies that center
marginalized perspectives, investigating how online mis- and disinformation
spreads and functions differently within different communities, how it can
contribute to further harm in such communities, and asking how critical
disinformation studies perspectives like these might transform the field as
a whole.

This hybrid, one-day symposium will consist of an opening keynote speech by
Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiser, and three subsequent themed panels. The first panel
will explore gender, sexuality, and misinformation; the second will address
misinformation in diasporic communities; and the third will look at global
perspectives on algorithmically amplified misinformation as it relates to
race and religion. Each panel will consist of 4 - 5 papers. These three
themed areas are enumerated further below:

*Panel 1: Gender, Sexuality, & Misinformation *

Gender and sexuality are underexplored aspects of mis- and disinformation
studies. While gender has sometimes been discussed as a demographic aspect
of mis and disinformation spread (Rampersad and Althiyabi, 2020), and there
has been significant work done on the oppression of gender minorities via
gendered cisnormative policy and ideology (Tripodi, 2022) little has been
done in the mis- and disinformation studies space analyzing the gender
dynamics involved in the spread of disinformation that is targeted
specifically at, or is about, women, femmes, transgender, and
gender-nonconforming people. For example, although the “gender critical”
movement, whose members are sometimes known as Transgender Exclusionary
Radical Feminists (TERFs), has been variously examined by philosophers
(Zanghellini, 2020), gender studies scholars (Thurlow, 2022), and others,
little has been done in the mis- and disinformation space about how the
ideology is spread using disinformation tactics. Many other scholars work
on gender, sexuality, and misinformation, but they have not, as of yet,
come together in an intellectual commons. The proposed panel seeks to
rectify that.

Potential topics for this panel include:

●      Sociopolitical feedback loops between conservative policymaking in
the U.S. and platform-enabled hate speech; comparative studies that address
similar phenomena in global contexts

●      Instances in which women, femmes, genderqueer people, and gender
minorities may use purported misinformation to speak back to hegemony

●      Explorations and examples of what *gendered disinformation *may look
like in practice

●      Intersections between racialized and gendered disinformation

*Panel 2: Mis/Disinformation in Diasporic Communities *

Diasporic groups are increasingly recognized as populations that are
vulnerable to information operations and various kinds of online
misinformation. These groups deserve scholarly treatment in addition to
studies of the “general public” in Western societies, because the
information networks that permeate diasporic communities are transnational,
resulting from shifting information needs during the integration processes.
Such networks are multi-layered, consisting of social messaging apps,
ethnic media channels, and a mix of media sources from both the home
country and the destination country. Such complexity invites close
examinations of misinformation spread instead of extrapolating from
general-population studies. In addition, diasporic groups are subject to
targeted information threats by actors from both home and settling
countries. For example, migrants from authoritarian countries are exposed
to propaganda by the governments of their home countries, yet they are
sometimes also subject to mis/disinformation by far-right groups,
conspiracy theorists, etc. in their new countries of residence. How
immigrants navigate such multicultural and-- in many cases-- multilingual
information systems warrants further research. This symposium aims to
identify challenges in researching mis/disinformation in diasporic
communities, and highlight new approaches to studying this topic.[MAE1]
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_-7317489065968409431__msocom_1>

Potential topics for this panel include:

●      How misinformation circulates within transnational media and
information networks

●      Case studies that explore the targeting of diasporic communities

●      The impact of misinformation in multilingual contexts

●      Support for/belief in authoritarianism among diaspora groups

●      Case studies or comparative research on ethnic media and information
channels

*Panel 3: Misinformation & Algorithmic Amplification: Global Perspectives
on Race and Religion*

>From merely biased coverage to utter fabrications, misinformation has
become a powerful actor in shaping public opinion (Ognyanova et al., 2020),
and has in turn impacted religious, ethnic, and racial minorities whose
identities in the Global North and South. Racialized misinformation targets
Black communities online using digital blackface (Green, 2006; Jackson,
2017; Jones, 2019; Leonard, 2004) and stereotypical representations of
Blackness. Similarly, during the 2016 elections in the United States, the
Russian agency created social media accounts masking as Black users,
creating racial and political divides to suppress Black voter turnout
(Freelon et al, 2022). At a time when COVID-19 continues to impact various
communities, accurate and bias-free health and anti-racist messages on the
web have also become more critical than ever (Grover et al, 2020). Health
and vaccine misinformation and digital violence on social media platforms
in the United States (Ong, 2021; Grover, 2020) as well as in countries in
the Global South including India (Arun, 2019; Farooq, 2018; Mukherjee,
2020; Menon, 2020; Sayeed, 2021) have resulted in communal violence against
racial and religious minorities.

The algorithms used by social media platforms incorporate such biases
(Noble, 2018; Benjamin, 2019; Eubanks, 2018, O’Neil, 2016), exacerbating
the misinformation problem not merely in English but also in various
cultural and linguistic contexts across the world. This panel on
“Misinformation and Algorithmic Amplification” seeks to offer
multidisciplinary, transcultural, and transnational understandings of how
misinformation/disinformation affects vulnerable and marginalized racial
and religious minorities in a global context. We welcome papers that
investigate algorithmic misinformation on social media platforms, and the
state of digital dissemination of information across various axes of
difference such as race, ethnicity, religion, and caste as categories of
information production, mediation, and reception in the multicultural
context.

Potential topics for this panel include:

●      Racialized disinformation and its impacts on marginalized communities

●      Health misinformation and its disproportionate impacts on minority
communities

●      Algorithmic misinformation on social media, especially in the Global
South

●      Impacts of misinformation flows on religious minorities in the
Global North and/or Global South

Key dates:

●      Deadline for extended abstracts (800 - 1000 words): June 30, 2023

○      *Abstracts (in .docx or .pdf form) can be sent to ymeadon at unc.edu
<ymeadon at unc.edu>*

○      *Please specify in the email which panel you are submitting to *

●      Notification of acceptance: July 15, 2023

●      Conference date: October 16, 2023

●      Questions, concerns, and comments can be sent to ymeadon at unc.edu

References

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-- 
Yvonne M. Eadon, MLIS, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life <http://citap.unc.edu/>
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
She/ her
website <http://yvonneeadon.com> | twitter
<https://twitter.com/yvonnemelisande>