*CFP* “NAVIGATING FAKE NEWS, ALTERNATIVE FACTS, AND MISINFORMATION IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD”, BOOK CHAPTER

In a post-truth world, objective facts have less influence on opinions and decisions than emotions and personal beliefs. People deliberately select those facts and data that support their preferred conclusions and classify any information that contradicts their beliefs as “false news..” This is not a recent problem but the Internet and social media allow information sharing at an incredible speed (practically real-time) and over a much greater geographic range (almost worldwide). There is also increasingly a crowd-sourcing approach to gathering information. PEW Research notes most people read news through their social networks rather than independent news reports . This creates an overall false balance as people tend to seek out information that is compatible with their existing views and values.

How can information and knowledge management as well as policies and technologies help in a post-truth world? Can newer technologies such as artificial intelligence improve the efficiency and effectiveness of fact checking (e.g. through a news filtering agents that identify false news much as we identify junk email)?. How can we better educate our students and train our professionals so that they have the full range of literacies or meta-literacy needed to navigate in a post-truth world? How can policies be implemented, both within organizations and within countries, to combat misinformation and instead ensure validated content is created, shared, disseminated and preserved in order to better inform decision and policy-making?

Objective

There is an interesting intersection of human (manual) methods to address post-truth (such as information literacy workshops and legal or policy changes to deter the spread of misinformation online) and a more automated, machine/AI-based approach (e.g. an algorithm that detects fake news dissemination patterns in social media). This book will bring together the different disciplines and research approaches to provide a comprehensive and effective toolkit to deal with information and knowledge in the post-truth era. The objective is to integrate approaches from the educational, policy and technology sectors because they must all work together to combat fake news. The proposed book is expected to have a wide impact as it will resonate with a broad audience of educators, policymakers and technology developers. There is potentially significant value in providing a blueprint to help users navigate in this convoluted world of increasingly complex and dubious content. The only uncontested prediction is that the volume will only increase making its validation even more challenging.

Target Audience

There are three main groups that would be interested in making use of this book: educators, policymakers and technology developers. Educators will be better equipped to teach the multiple and meta-literacies needed to deal with information and knowledge, both in formal curricula but also in workshops. Many universities as well as some companies now have a requirement that all employees successfully complete training on information literacy. Policymakers at the organizational and societal levels will need to better understand the risks posed by post-truth information and knowledge flows in order to implement policies and legislation that offer real consequences (e.g. Germany passed a law making it illegal to spread false information). In addition, technology and software developers will have a deeper understanding of how and why people create and share fake news so they can develop algorithms capable of detecting and eventually preventing their dissemination.

Recommended Topics

• History – fake news is not new

• Definitions – viral propagation, misinformation, pseudoscience, alternative facts

• Typology of false information and knowledge

• Propaganda

• Hoaxes

• Fraud

• Urban myths

• Satire

• Biased algorithms

• New information literacies for the post-truth world

• How to detect false information (fake news, fake websites)

• Meta-literacy, info and knowledge behavior e.g. info avoidance,

• The role of emotion, personal beliefs

• The role of time – speed of dissemination

• The role of repetition

• The role of information overload

• The role of technology – scope of dissemination

• The policy landscape needed for the post-truth world (legislation, organizational policies)

• Tools and technologies to support digital citizens

• AI-based tools

• Mobile apps

• Recommendations on literacy, policy and/or technology for better navigating in a post-truth world

  

Submission Procedure

We would like to invite you to contribute a paper given your interest and expertise in this area. Chapter proposals are due June 4, 2019. They should not exceed 1500 words. Your proposal should outline the objectives of your chapter.

Authors will be notified by June 25, 2019 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by August 3, 2019,

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. All interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions prior to submission.

There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication.

All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery®TM online submission manager.

Call for chapters for a new book to be published by IGI Global in 2020.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference," "Business Science Reference," and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. Additional information regarding the publisher. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2020.

  

Important Dates

June 4, 2019: Proposal Submission Deadline

June 25, 2019: Notification of Acceptance

August 3, 2019: Full Chapter Submission

October 1 2019: Review Results Returned to Authors

October 29, 2019: Revised chapter submission

Sept. 29, 2019: Final Acceptance Notification

Nov, 12 2019: Final Chapter Submission

2020: Book publication