[Note: Use the ‘Language’ link at the journal’s website to find out more about Enrahonar.  –Matthew]

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Monograph: “Current narratives in digital society: Disinformation, fake news and ethical-political dynamics”
For the Journal Enrahonar-Quaderns de Filosofia, an international journal of theoretical and practical reason
Guest editors: Miguel Palomo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); Walter Federico Gadea Aiello (Universidad de Huelva)

Submission deadline: March 31, 2024
Please submit your paper through OJS: https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar

Fake news, infodemic, deepfakes, hoaxes, post-truth, conspiracy theories… are all notions that have begun to form a part of the range of terminology needed to explain the reality in which we live.

As a result of the digital transition, our society in its digital and urban aspects has undergone significant changes, which in turn have led to changes in social models, perceptions of public institutions and welfare. The phenomenon of disinformation has probably become the most important pillar from which to understand these current drifts. It is therefore crucial to understand the narratives that promote disinformation and cause users of digital society to engage in actions that jeopardise the social, political and economic statu quo.

From a strictly philosophical perspective, Plato´s disagreement with the Sophists over the existence or non-existence of truth renown. The Sophists’ commitment to the blunt use of discourse in order to obtain strategic goals and results makes us think that we are once again in “Plato’s Cave”, with the additional problem that is no way of knowing whether we have left it or entered another one. The concepts of truth and reality are profoundly questioned by this new virtual environment and this leads us to question whether or not we are in a position to know what is happening in our hyper-communicative societies.

If citizens are not able to distinguish between true and false facts, and if we are not able to sift through the enormous amount of information that we receive daily in a fragmented and decontextualised form, how will we be able to make the correct decisions in the democratic field? How will we know which public official is lying to us or who is telling the truth? In this fragile context of ideological radicalisation and surge of illiberal democracies, the search for answers about fake news is a way to reply not only important epistemological questions, but also to understand how far and how we can build legitimate and durable democratic systems. The rise of populism around the world reflects a crisis of the foundations of truth and democracy. Are we once again witnessing Plato’s old argument with the sophists, but in a more complex social context and with greater social uncertainty?

For all the above reasons, this monograph seeks to respond to the way in which different narratives in digital society shape these phenomena that in turn have clear ethical and political impacts. All this without forgetting that a philosophical exercise is involved in order to explain the way through which these phenomena are capable of moulding social and individual thought and even ideologically radicalising the subjects present in the digital environment. In this sense, we will be able to build conceptual tools and strategies to deal with these problems, as well as with similar problems that may arise in the future and which originate in the digital society.

Some of the themes that will be included in the monograph are:

• Infodemic: from information overload to disinformation
• Troll farms, political parties and harmful use of social media
• Deepfakes and the use of images as ideological persuasion
• AI developments that promote or obstruct the impacts of fake news
• Ethics, politics and communication in a post-Covid society
• The role of public institutions (scientific, educational etc.) in alleviating disinformation
• The border between fiction and reality
• Digital societies
• Technopeople, new anthropologies in the digital era
• Philosophy of information
• Others, duly justified on the basis of the theme of the monograph

For more information, please contact Miguel Palomo Garcia at mipalomo@UCM.ES