[Commlist] CFP - Public Communication and Armed Conflicts

Articles for Vol. 16, Issue 2 (Jul-Dec, 2023) + Open Section "Avances"
Public Communication and Armed Conflicts: The Role of Cognition and the 
Algorithm in Defense and National Security Environments
https://revistas.urosario.edu.co/index.php/disertaciones/about/submissions

Cyberspace has established itself as a new environment of strategic 
relevance in fields such as geopolitics, economy, defense, and of course 
in the development of armed conflicts where a disruptive change has 
occurred both in the physical limits in which they develop, as well as 
with the ethical and legal judgment that they have deserved up to now.

New technologies have altered military tactics mainly in three aspects, 
namely: autonomous weapons systems, that is, remote warfare; the command 
and control of the conflict aided by predictive artificial intelligence; 
and the control of the social groups concerned through the new ICTs 
applied to the so-called cognitive field.

The algorithm has shaped a new battlefield with new rules and new 
possibilities for the contenders. Without physical borders or clear 
judicial demarcations, with an international regulation based for the 
moment on codes of good practice and responsible behavior. This is 
something that seems ironic when dealing with war issues.

Innovative tools such as the Internet, together with social media, have 
created a space where political legitimacy is created and a large part 
of the decisions are made, including military ones. These mechanisms, 
properly used in the cognitive field of the so-called cyber wars, will 
be the new weaponry with which it will be possible to subjugate enemy 
nations or groups without warfare or bloodshed once the support of 
public opinion has been won.

With these techniques, this type of confrontation could be avoided, 
since the same authorities, institutions, and opinion leaders of the 
enemy countries, once conveniently corrupted, can become network 
operators themselves, creating a political story with which dissent is 
eliminated, both through soft censorship (such as the imposition of 
political correctness and its agenda) and harsh censorship, such as 
information closure, deletion, denial of services and presence, fake 
news, hacker activism, cyber guerrilla or cyberwar. Thus, persuasion 
takes on special relevance in the field of military operations, of which 
Sun Tzu already spoke: "You have to subjugate the enemy without 
presenting a battle."

Thus, the vulnerability that underlies these technologies is that if 
they are used perfidiously in the cognitive field, there is the 
possibility of turning democratic systems into virtual democracies 
disconnected from citizens, in which the truly important decisions would 
be taken by a technical elite, the specialists, with an unknown face, 
who would dominate the algorithms, designing them according to their 
particular ideology and sibylline vision of logic without the help of 
citizens turned into users.

In this call for papers, Disertaciones seeks original empirical articles 
that address moral, technical, or legal aspects of how States, or 
parastatal organizations, address the use of so-called new technologies 
in the cognitive field, that of persuasion and social engineering 
applied to armed conflicts and warlike emergencies. All of which does 
not exclude other proposals that deal with issues related to 
communication/cyber warfare/artificial intelligence, associated with 
Defense and the security of civilians.


As a guide, the following topics of interest are suggested:

- Algorithms and war propaganda: moral and legal aspects.

- Artificial Intelligence, new technologies, platforms for disseminating 
information and social communication: their influence in the field of 
Security and Defense.

- The geopolitics of chips: new communication and information 
technologies and their influence on the arms industry.

- New forms of control: Bots, Twitter, Facebook, and the censorship of 
the big news monopolies.

- Serious social alterations and ethical codes of communication 
companies in the new secular religions: indigenism, environmentalism, 
immigration, politics as revealed truths, etc.

- Cyberattacks on States and their psychosocial effects on the population

- Ethics and legality of the control of society through algorithms, 
social engineering, and communication. Indignation, protest, and war.

- State actors, cyberactivism, and new information technologies to 
modulate social perceptions and influence the opinion and reputation of 
States.

- The polarization of discourse, through the algorithm, through social 
media and its influence on electoral processes, pre-war situations, or 
open wars.

- State actors and the use of cyber mercenaries in social conflicts and 
live or latent armed conflicts.

- The polarization of discourse through social networks and its 
influence on electoral processes, pre-war situations, or open wars.

- Algocracy, public communication, and military forces.

- Hacker activism, fake news, cyber communication, and the new cyber 
warriors in the next cyber cold war.

- Cyberwar, National Security, strategic communication, and its legislation.

- Armed conflicts, Spanish Armed Forces, and their public information 
units. The Public Information Regiment.

- Use of artificial intelligence and public communication in the 
prevention and response to disaster or emergencies.

- Internet, social media, and protection of the civilian population in 
disaster situations, war emergencies.

- The universalization of journalism in emergencies. From war 
correspondents to the immediacy of YouTube.

NOTE: This journal provides free and immediate access to your content. 
This means that no fees are charged to authors for their article’s 
processing, evaluation, and publication.

Deadline: September 30th, 2022.

Coordinated by Ángel Ibáñez ((angelip2003 /at/ hotmail.com))

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