*CFP* "COMMENTS, HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION, AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION REGULATION", INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Comments, hate speech, disinformation, and public communication regulation

Zagreb, Croatia, Sheraton hotel, 

16 and 17 September 2021

 

Technological development has brought rapid and simple spread of speech in professional and civic communication. Digital public space is a space of democratic freedoms for each individual, but it is often a space of numerous disinformation and fake news, concerning offensive speech and discriminatory speech targeting ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, immigrants, and various vulnerable groups. Readers’ comments can be an important form of argumentative civic debate, but they are also a way for citizens to express aggressive, inciting, or offensive attitudes toward others or use hate speech. Both media and other business entities on the internet encounter this phenomenon of digital communication and try to resist it in different ways. In the issues between freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, there is a daily intellectual struggle for the right to information, media freedom, internet neutrality. How should our legislation participate in this, what are the experiences of different national legal regulations? What does the struggle against disinformation and hate speech involve, is this fight a multidimensional task in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system?

We invite scientists of interdisciplinary orientations to submit their empirical or theoretical research and contribute to the discussion within the following topics or other topics that can broaden the insight into the issue:

• Legal aspects and freedom of speech in the regulation of public communication 
• Fight against disinformation 
• Hate speech in the public media space 
• Hate speech in the citizens’ comments 
• Readers’ comments as a form of political participation 
• The impact of citizens’ comments on the journalistic profession 
• The impact of citizens’ comments on business in tourism and other professions 
• The role of self-regulation in regulating disinformation and unacceptable forms of speech 
• Methodological approaches in scientific research of misinformation and comments on the Internet (big data) 
• Network tools for collecting, analysing, and visualising online forms of discourse 
• Analysis of sentiment in offensive and insulting speech according to vulnerable groups

 

Additional information:

Applications for participation in the conference should be submitted by 16 April 2021 at Application

The application must include: information about the author(s) (contact, position) and a 350-word abstract in Croatian with an English translation. Foreign authors should submit the Abstract in English only.

A notice of accepted presentations will be sent by 30 April 2021

A book of abstracts will be printed before the conference.

Complete scientific papers must be submitted by 1 September 2021. Papers should be written according to the Instructions to Authors available on the conference website (scope, citing, listing literature, marking tables and graphs, and graphic elements).

Scientific papers from the conference will enter the process of double international anonymous review. Selected papers with the best reviews will be published in the special issue of the Media Research scientific journal.

All other submitted papers will be published in the Proceedings with an international review.

 

Organisers:

Agency forElectronic Media.

Media Research.

 

Co-Organiser:

Scientific Council for the Theatre, Film, Radio and Television of the Croatian Academy ofSciences and Arts.

 

Additional information can be found on conference website.