The spread of fake news and misinformation has become a major issue in the digital age, with significant consequences for individuals and society especially during times of crisis. Examples include the Russian war against Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, where misinformation has been used as a weapon to manipulate public opinion and sow discord. During these crises, vulnerability to misinformation and manipulation increases, as audiences use online spaces for collective sense-making, especially when limited authoritative information is available. Disaster-management personnel, public-health officials, political elites, and media elites have all expressed concern about misinformation and online manipulation during such times and have sought solutions to improve information quality during times of crisis.
Crisis Informatics researchers are uniquely positioned to understand and respond to this phenomenon. Their work focuses on how people use technology to communicate, coordinate, and respond to crises, as well as how technology can be designed and deployed to better support crisis management. Focusing on needs of these stakeholders can enhance the impact of methods for countering information warfare, as these individuals‘ insights can help designers understand the role technology plays in this sociotechnical problem.
In this special issue, we aim to explore user-centric countermeasures for combating fake news and misinformation in the context of crisis informatics and human-computer interaction. We welcome innovative human-computer interaction techniques and methodologies relevant to the design, analysis, and evaluation of applications. Papers may be conceptual, theoretical, empirical, or technical in nature.
Some aspects that papers may address include:
- Studies of susceptibility to fake news and misinformation for individuals and society during crisis events
- Information warfare, and political dimensions of inadvertent misinformation and intentional manipulation during crises
- User-centric approaches to detecting and combating misinformation, reducing vulnerability to manipulation, or enhancing resilience in the context of crisis events
- Design and evaluation of tools and applications to measure misinformation, vulnerability, and impact in crises
- Ethical considerations in combating misinformation and manipulation
- Studies of collective sense-making in crises and its connection to misinformation
- Research methods that address concerns about data access in constrained environments or contexts hostile to observation
We invite researchers and practitioners from the disciplines of crisis informatics and human-computer interaction to submit original research articles, review articles, and case studies for this special issue.
Up-to-date information can be found at: https://peasec.de/2023/cfp-infowarefare/
