[Commlist] CFP: Platforms and the Mediation of Conflicts in Politically Hostile Environments

Sharing with you our exciting call for papers for a special issue in 
Platforms & Society - Platforms and the Mediation of Conflicts in 
Politically Hostile Environments.

The guest editors - Emillie de Keulenaar, Diyi Liu, João C. Magalhães, 
Ivar Alberto Hartmann, and myself (Tom Divon)- come to this with a 
broader concern about the ecology of power through which conflict is 
mediated on platforms: how it becomes visible, circulates, gains 
credibility, triggers action, or disappears. We know the power of 
mediation may be a tale as old as time, but platforms make that power 
especially tangible and infrastructural. Their normative assumptions, 
carried through moderators, policies, algorithms, and interfaces, help 
structure these spaces of mediation and determine what reaches our 
eyeballs, and what never does.

We therefore welcome scholarship that advances our understanding of how 
platforms mediate conflict in environments shaped by democratic 
instability, authoritarian pressure, occupation, political violence, or 
war. The full CFP sets out the range of possible angles, including 
platform moderation and governance, state pressure and regulation, 
visibility and participation, propaganda and disinformation, witnessing 
and evidence, activist and journalistic practices, prosocial or 
conflict-sensitive design, and emerging technologies such as GenAI. We 
welcome different platforms, cases, regions, methods, and theoretical 
approaches.

We would be delighted to hear from anyone whose work sits somewhere in 
this universe, and would be very grateful if you could circulate the 
call to colleagues and networks who might be interested. The full CFP is 
available here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dg2D1NdEBQ50KAMCmypz8IaFduF4heSj/view?usp=drive_link 
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dg2D1NdEBQ50KAMCmypz8IaFduF4heSj/view?usp=drive_link>

*Abstracts: up to 700 words (with the requested structure detailed in 
the CFP)
*Due date: 17 December 2026
*Decisions: late January 2027
*Submit (and fire any questions!) to: (platformsandconflicts /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(platformsandconflicts /at/ gmail.com)>

*Publication fees will not be imposed on the authors.

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