[Commlist] Call for Papers: Communication and the Public (Special Issue: The Information Warfare in the era of Social Media: the Case of the Russian-Ukrainian Crisis)

CALL FOR PAPER

Topic:

The Information Warfare in the era of Social Media: the Case of the 
Russian-Ukrainian Crisis

Guest editors:

Dr. Fen Lin
City University of Hong Kong

Professor Hongzhong Zhang
Beijing Normal University

Journal: Communication and the Public: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctp


The ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine has become a 
new battleground of modern information warfare. The role of social media 
has been well documented during the Euromaidan in Ukraine, during the 
Crimean crisis, and in the separatist rebellion in Donbass. The current 
confrontation sparked a new wave of misinformation across social media, 
turning the context of Ukraine into a media battlefield. Due to the 
extensive scale of the current war, the sides of the conflict enacted a 
number of tools, including automated algorithms and human intervention, 
with the far-reaching goal to shape public opinion both domestically and 
internationally. In addition to the conventional propaganda, social 
media bots and trolls become the main actors of computational 
propaganda. Bots and trolls automate or misrepresent their identities to 
mimic the actual users to collect, disseminate, and communicate news and 
information, creating a false consensus or promoting discord. As the 
roles and functioning mechanisms of the information warfare in the 
Russian-Ukrainian crisis are still evolving, this special issue calls 
for contribution to understand the institutional infrastructure, the 
communication mechanisms, and the impacts of information warfare in the 
era of social media with a specific focus on the context of the 
Russian-Ukrainian War.


Topic of Research

In particular, this proposed special issue at the Communication and the 
Public, a Scopus-indexed journal, would like to invite authors to 
contribute to a nuanced understanding of information warfare from 
multi-disciplinary perspectives. Contributors are welcome to submit 
manuscripts on the following related topics:
 · How is information warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War organized on 
social media? What are its participants, forms, strategies, and networks?
· How is computational propaganda (bots and trolls) mobilized in the 
Russia-Ukraine information warfare? How do the news and traditional 
propaganda institutions and participate in computational propaganda 
regarding the Russian-Ukraine war?
· How do bot messages (e.g., bot tweets) distinguish from human messages 
in terms of contents and communication? How does computational 
propaganda affect the news and public agenda? What are the impacts of 
bot messages on the international reactions to the war?

· What are the implications of information warfare and computational 
propaganda for information and platform governance?

Specific Plans:

The submission to this special issue will go through a fast-track 
review. And the qualified manuscripts will be published in CAP online 
first on a rolling process.
The specific timeline is:
• Extended abstracts: June 30, 2022

Potential contributors are expected to submit an extended abstract (no 
more than 800 words) no later than June 30, 2022. The abstract should 
include the primary literature, data, analytical methods, and 
preliminary conclusions, if applicable.
Contributors should email the extended abstract to the journal’s 
official email ((communication-public /at/ zju.edu.cn)) and to the guest 
editors’ emails ((fenlin /at/ cityu.edu.hk); (zhanghz9 /at/ 126.com)). Please also 
include the contributors’ biographic information and the corresponding 
authors’ contact information.

• Full draft invitations and rejection notifications: within two weeks

The guest editors and the CAP editors will assess the extended 
abstracts. The authors will be informed of comments or suggestions 
within two weeks, including the acceptance or rejection.

• Complete paper submission: August 31, 2022

The full publication is expected not later than August 31, 2022. The 
complete paper should be submitted via CAP’s online submission system. 
For detail submission guideline, please click here. Please indicate the 
submission is for this special issue.
Please be aware that the acceptance of abstracts doesn’t guarantee paper 
acceptance. All submissions will go through a thorough double-blind 
review process.

• Special Issue Publication: online version starts since November 1, 2022

The special issue will publish the accepted manuscripts online first 
starting from November 1, 2022.
(There is no payment required from the authors for the special issue.)





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