Disinformation in Science Communication: Threats, Challenges and Potential Solutions

Dear Colleagues,

Five years have passed since the European Commission, through its High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation, warned about the worrisome impact of disinformation on modern societies. The scientific research conducted since then has proven those concerns justified with information disorders proliferating and affecting different fields of the public sphere, some of them interconnected (i.e., science denial and its connections to populist political discourses). This growing concern has also greatly caught the attention of academia, as proved by the expanding literature that aims at tackling a phenomenon that is always challenging to conceptualise due to, amongst other reasons, its inherently changing nature.

This Special Issue aims at shedding more light on the impact that information disorders currently have in the communication of scientific content. Social networks have proved to be an effective means to transmit information at an unprecedented massive scale, and this has opened obvious opportunities to disseminate valuable scientific information. However, the possibility to also spread content that has not been endorsed by scientific research or even question findings that have been backed up by science is an obvious side effect of this new communication paradigm where everyone has the potential to literally be a mass communicator.

We seek submissions related but not limited to the following topics:

• the impact of disinformation on the field of science communication
• case studies of successful attempts to fight information disorders through media literacy that are applicable to the field of science communication
• the positive and negative impacts of retractions within scholarly communication
• research examining the current role of traditional media in the dissemination of science information, with an aim to determine if they are functioning as disseminators of false content or if they are still more reliable than uncredited sources
• case studies on the design of policies and communication strategies displayed by local, national, and international institutions to counter the effects of disinformation, either to spot good practices or areas with room for improvement
• an analysis of different legal environments and initiatives aimed at fostering trust in science and/or countering the dissemination of false content related to science
• the role of technology in the proliferation of information disorders, especially in the field of science communication, with special focus on artificial intelligence as a threat to high quality information
• a critical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of restrictive measures to avoid the dissemination of disinforming content related to science

Prof. Dr. Roberto Gelado-Marcos
Prof. Dr. José Sixto-García
Prof. Dr. Juan Enrique Gonzálvez Vallés
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• disinformation
• "fake news"
• information disorders
• science communication
• media literacy
• academic social networks
• scientific literacy
• open science
• technologies for divulgation
• open data