Fake News Post-COVID-19
A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 March 2024) | Viewed by 23169
Special Issue Editors
Interests: reformulation of journalism and political communication in the digital environment; social media; media ethics; disinformation; fact checking; entrepreneurship in journalism; personal branding in journalism
Interests: corporate communication; communication for health; mobile and transmedia communication
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The dissemination of deliberately false information has worsened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, entailing consequences for journalism and democracy. The pandemic has intensified a bad practice that was already on the rise in the field of political communication as a result of the discourse of politicians such as Donald Trump on platforms such as Twitter (Ross and Rivers, 2018). In fact, it has been confirmed that much of the misleading information concerning the coronavirus was received through social media and instant messaging systems (Nielsen et al., 2020). The growing proliferation of fake news has encouraged the academy to theorize about the types of hoaxes spreading in the digital environment (Salaverría et al., 2020) and their impact on the traditional media system (Casero-Ripollés, 2020). The study of fact checking as a practice to tackle misinformation has also awoken interest (Amazeen, 2020; Graves, 2017). In addition, the focus has been transferred to citizenship, especially to find out how social media users respond to fake news (Tandoc et al., 2020). However, these lines of research are still incipient, and we need more empirical work to improve the democratic quality of public debate and journalism in the post-COVID-19 era.
The generic aim of this Special Issue is to delve into the aforementioned lines of research. For this reason its scope extends to very diverse fields: journalism, political communication, sociology, ethics, fundamental rights and teaching, among others. In this respect, several specific goals are proposed in order to:
- Assess the impact of the rise of fake news in journalism and apply solutions to tackle it.
- Identify which factors and social actors influence the origin and viralization of fake news.
- Analyze the role of social media and instant messaging applications users in the spread of fake news.
- Investigate the consequences of the consumption of fake news in the civic and political attitudes and behaviors of citizens.
- Diagnose the main difficulties of citizens in detecting hoaxes and identify resources to remedy them.
- Include strategies and resources in the teaching of journalism to improve skills in verifying information in the digital environment.
Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) for the journal and address the topic of the special issue.
Prof. Dr. Amparo López-Meri
Prof. Dr. Carmen Costa-Sánchez
Prof. Dr. Silvia Marcos-García
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- fake news
- post-truth
- misinformation
- disinformation
- fact checking
- social media
- journalism
- political communication
- democracy
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.