*CFP* "MEDIA AND FAKERY", SPECIAL ISSUE, CONTINUUM, JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

Digital communications have inaugurated a proliferation of resources for faking the origins of information. As developments such as the ‘deepfake,’ fake news or AI-generated content destabilise presumptions of informational dependability and authenticity, it becomes increasingly clear that a new set of communication theories are needed to probe these complex mediated relations. We invite scholars working in media, communication and cultural studies to submit abstracts that interrogate the impact of media fakery on theories of media, communication and cultural studies.

A Special Issue on the topic of Media and Fakery will be submitted to Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

While all media contains elements of creative fabrication, we define media fakery as an attempt to conceal the origins of information that must contain a degree of human intentionality to be considered ‘fake.’ Rather than understandings of ‘the fake’ as merely a vehicle to undermine or exploit trust, which inform characterisation of fake news as mis- or dis-information, ‘media fakery’ attempts to broaden the scope of interrogation. 

We are interested in a new era marked by an increasing acceptance that all of us can ‘fake’ communications; an era of media fakery is one in which digital resources for manipulating and fabricating content are more broadly available. While scholars and journalists survey growing mistrust in the veracity of online communications, it is possible too that this mistrust might be a healthy adjustment to an experimental, shared space in which all manner of new, socially distributed informational manipulations and machinic collaborations have become possible. We propose to explore the cultural implications of these trends, and to examine fakery’s relevance to changes in media ecology more broadly. This proposed Issue considers the role of intentionality in the construction of media that purports to ‘be’ something that it is not or originate from a source that it does not. Additionally, the Issue explores the way these opportunities for fabrication and falsity create an ambiguity around our implicit association of content and authorial identities, implicating producers and consumers in complex, and (potentially) politically subversive ways. 

The ambiguous (in origin, in veracity, in identity) configures encounters with media fakery in ways that enable consumers to question the processes of communication they are engaged with, or it allows producers a means of self-protection (to both defensive and offensive ends). The implications of these digital ambiguities migrate to offline worlds, lives, and behaviour, as fakery online comes to irrevocably change our notions of relationality.

The fake may destabilise our trust in media and belief systems, but it equally destabilises established media and communication theories. In problematising existing theories and looking ahead to the theoretical and socio-cultural implications of current media trends, this Issue hopes to prompt reflection that brings new perspectives to media, communication and cultural studies.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• fake news 
• the deepfake 
• public trust in journalism and politics 
• “truthiness,” pseudoscience and pseudo-communications 
• affect, cognitive biases and media psychology 
• the distribution of fake media in social networks  
• Facebook and Twitter bots
• satirical news websites 
• hoaxes, false authorship and fraud 
• artificial intelligence and authorship 
• gender, ethnicity and sexual identity in digital communications 
• identity theft, catfishing and online identities 
• post-truth political communications 
• astroturfing, front organisations and advertorial 
• public relations and propaganda 
• data mining and targeted content
• algorithmic aggregators and generators of news 
• “mockumentary” media 
• fakery in transmedial and transnational communications 
• ambiguity, authenticity and intentionality 
• empirical research in media fakery production and reception

Submission

Please submit the following to: mediafakery@nottingham.edu.cn

250 word (max) abstract

100-150 word biography

Deadlines

Abstract submission deadline: 1 March 2020

Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2020

Article submission deadline: 1 July 2020

Editorial review: August 2020

Author revisions based on editorial review: September 2020

Submission to Continuum: September 2020